Salt bridges destabilize a leucine zipper designed for maximized ion pairing between helices

Interhelical salt bridges are common in leucine zippers and are thought to stabilize the coiled coil conformation. Here we present a detailed thermodynamic investigation of the designed, disulfide-linked leucine zipper AB(SS) whose high-resolution NMR structure shows six interhelical ion pairs between heptad positions g of one helix and e' of the other helix but no ion pairing within single helices. The average pK(a) value of the Glu side chain carboxyl groups of AB(SS) is slightly higher than the pK(a) of a freely accessible Glu in an unfolded peptide [Marti, D. N., Jelesarov, I., and Bosshard, H. R. (2000) Biochemistry 39, 12804-12818]. This indicates that the salt bridges are destabilizing, a prediction we now have confirmed by determining the pH +/- stability profile of AB(SS). Circular dichroism-monitored unfolding by urea and by heating and differential scanning calorimetry show that the coiled coil conformation is approximately 5 kJ/mol more stable when salt bridges are broken by protonation of the carboxyl side chains. Using guanidinium chloride as the denaturant, the increase in the free energy of unfolding on protonation of the carboxyl side chains is larger, approximately 17 kJ/mol. The discrepancy between urea and guanidinium chloride unfolding can be ascribed to the ionic nature of guanidinium chloride, which screens charge-charge interactions. This work demonstrates the difficulty of predicting the energetic contribution of salt bridges from structural data alone even in a case where the ion pairs are seen in high-resolution NMR structures. The reason is that the contribution to stability results from a fine balance between energetically favorable Coulombic attractions and unfavorable desolvation of charges and conformational constraints of the residues involved in ion pairing. The apparent discrepancy between the results presented here and mutational studies indicating stabilization by salt bridges is discussed and resolved. An explanation is proposed for why interhelical salt bridges are frequently found in natural coiled coils despite evidence that they do not directly contribute to stability.