STRUCTURAL STUDIES OF ANESTHETIC BINDING TO SYNTHETIC PEPTIDE BUNDLES VIA X-RAY

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION: (taken from the application). The investigator plans to examine a) the localization of selected anesthetics within, and b) the resulting perturbation of the structures of, both water soluble and lipid soluble alpha helical bundles possessing designed cavities for high specificity anesthetic binding utilizing state-of-the-art synchrotron radiation-based x-ray scattering and cold neutron scattering techniques. Because such de novo designed "maquettes" based on alpha helical bundle motifs can be vectorially-oriented within single monolayer and single bilayer systems, they are particularly amenable to detailed structural studies employing these techniques without the requirement of single crystals thereof, either two- or three-dimensional. The overall secondary, tertiary and quaternary structures of these bundles, together with selected portions of the secondary structures of these synthetic artificial protein "maquettes" will be of particular interest. Since such de novo designed "maquettes" based on alpha helical bundle motifs can mimic a variety of the important biological functions of both soluble and membrane proteins, including enzyme catalysis and specific ion channel activity, it is anticipated that these structural studies will provide considerable insight into possible mechanisms of anesthetic action based on protein targets, especially when combined with detailed molecular dynamics computer simulations of these same systems.