Coupling of conformational folding and disulfide-bond reactions in oxidative folding of proteins

The oxidative folding of proteins consists of conformational folding and disulfide-bond reactions. These two processes are coupled significantly in folding-coupled regeneration steps, in which a single chemical reaction (the "forward" reaction) converts a conformationally unstable precursor species into a conformationally stable, disulfide-protected successor species. Two limiting-case mechanisms for folding-coupled regeneration steps are described. In the folded-precursor mechanism, the precursor species is preferentially folded at the moment of the forward reaction. The (transient) native structure increases the effective concentrations of the reactive thiol and disulfide groups, thus favoring the forward reaction. By contrast, in the quasi-stochastic mechanism, the forward reaction occurs quasi-stochastically in an unfolded precursor; i.e., reactive groups encounter each other with a probability determined primarily by loop entropy, albeit modified by conformational biases in the unfolded state. The resulting successor species is initially unfolded, and its folding competes with backward chemical reactions to the unfolded precursors. The folded-precursor and quasi-stochastic mechanisms may be distinguished experimentally by the dependence of their kinetics on factors affecting the rates of thiol--disulfide exchange and conformational (un)folding. Experimental data and structural and biochemical arguments suggest that the quasi-stochastic mechanism is more plausible than the folded-precursor mechanism for most proteins.