Hydrodynamically coupled water in surface adsorbed amino acids as a tool to study hydrated peptides

Abstract

The influence of different amino acid residues on properties of a protein surface is of great interest and importance. Hydrodynamically coupled water in the amino acids has the potential to be used as a tool to study surface properties of proteins. The contribution of this coupled water fraction in design of a hydropathy scale in surface adsorbed amino acid films on solid using quartz crystal microbalance is presented in this work. This scale compares well with the hydropathy scale of Guy reported in the literature and can be correlated with the solid/liquid interfacial tension and work of adhesion of the adsorbed amino acid films. Using Graphical Representation and Analysis of Surface Properties (GRASP) the free energy of transfer from Octanol to water for the amino acids has been estimated and shows approximately an inverse relationship with the coupled water fraction. This scale has been applied in a benchmark test for a native Laminin peptide YIGSR and its mutated sequences (with mutations carried out at ‘Y and ‘R’ positions). The experimentally measured coupled water fractions seem to compare well with that obtained from the present scale assuming the total solvent fraction to be a linear function of the amino acids in the sequence. A survey of the protein data bank showed that sets of sequences based on this scale occur in membrane insertion domain or in trans-membrane proteins suggesting that the scale is suitable to study structure–function correlation in proteins.