Characterization of Residue Specific Protein Folding and Unfolding Dynamics in Cells

In this work, we measured the millisecond residue specific protein folding and unfolding dynamics in E. coli cells for two protein GB3 mutants using NMR. The results show that the protein folding and unfolding dynamics in cells is different from that in buffer. Through a two-site exchange model, it is shown that both the population and the exchange rate are changed by the E. coli cellular environment. Further investigation suggests that the change is likely due to the quinary interaction with crowded molecules in the cell. Our work underlines the importance of cellular environment to protein folding kinetics and thermodynamics although this environmental effect may not be large enough to change the protein structure.