Stability and folding dynamics of polyglutamic acid

The thermal stability and folding dynamics of polyglutamic acid were studied by equilibrium circular dichroism (CD), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR), and time-resolved temperature-jump infrared (IR) spectroscopy. Polyglutamic acid (PGA) forms α-helical peptides in aqueous solution and is an ideal model system to study the helix-coil transition. Melting curves were monitored with CD and FTIR as a function of pD. At low pD, PGA aggregates at temperatures above 323 K, whereas at pD >5, unfolding and refolding are reversible. At pD 5.4, a helix-coil transition occurs with a transition temperature T(m) of 307 K. At slightly higher pD of 6.2, the peptide conformation is already in a coil structure and only small conformational changes occur upon heating. We determined the equilibrium constant for the reversible helix-coil transition at pD 5.4. The dynamics of this transition was measured at single IR wavelengths after a nanosecond laser-excited temperature jump of ∆T ~ 10 K. Relaxation constants decreased with increasing peptide temperature. Folding and unfolding rates as well as activation energies were extracted based on a two-state model. Our study shows how equilibrium and time-resolved infrared spectroscopic data can be combined to characterize a structural transition and to analyze folding mechanisms.