Mechanical unfoldons as building blocks of maltose-binding protein

Identifying independently folding cores or substructures is important for understanding and assaying the structure, function and assembly of large proteins. Here, we suggest mechanical stability as a criterion to identify building blocks of the 366 amino acid maltose-binding protein (MBP). We find that MBP, when pulled at its termini, unfolds via three (meta-) stable unfolding intermediates. Consequently, the MBP structure consists of four structural blocks (unfoldons) that detach sequentially from the folded structure upon force application. We used cysteine cross-link mutations to characterize the four unfoldons structurally. We showed that many MBP constructs composed of those building blocks indeed form stably folded structures in solution. Mechanical unfoldons may provide a new tool for a systematic search for stable substructures of large proteins.