Partial molar volumes and adiabatic compressibilities of unfolded protein states Original Research Article

We determined the partial molar volumes, V°, and adiabatic compressibilities, K°S, of N-acetyl amino acids with neutralized carboxyl termini, N-acetyl amino acid amides, and N-acetyl amino acid methylamides between 18 and 55 °C. The individual compounds in the three classes have been selected so as to collectively cover the 20 naturally occurring amino acid side chains. We interpret our experimental results in terms of the volumetric contributions and hydration properties of individual amino acid side chains and their constituent atomic groups. We also conducted pH-dependent densimetric and acoustic measurements to determine changes in volume and compressibility accompanying protonation of the aspartic acid, glutamic acid, histidine, lysine, and arginine side chains. We use our resulting data to develop an additive scheme for calculating the partial molar (specific) volume and adiabatic compressibility of fully extended polypeptide chains as a function of pH and temperature. We discuss the differences and similarities between our proposed scheme and the reported additive approaches. We compare our calculated volumetric characteristics of the fully extended conformations of apocytochrome c and apomyoglobin with the experimental values measured in water (for apocytochrome c) or acidic pH (for apomyoglobin). At these respective experimental conditions, the two proteins are unfolded. However, the comparison between the calculated and experimental volumetric characteristics suggests that neither apocytochrome c nor apomyoglobin are fully unfolded and retain a sizeable core of solvent-inaccessible groups.