Our goal was to gain a better understanding of the contribution of the burial of polar groups and their hydrogen bonds to the conformational stability of proteins. We measured the change in stability, D(DG), for a series of hydrogen bonding mutants in four proteins: villin headpiece subdomain (VHP) containing 36 residues, a surface protein from Borrelia burgdorferi (VlsE) containing 341 residues, and two proteins previously studied in our laboratory, ribonucleases Sa (RNase Sa) and T1 (RNase T1). Crystal structures were determined for three of the hydrogen bonding mutants of RNase Sa: S24A, Y51F, and T95A. The structures are very similar to wild type RNase Sa and the hydrogen bonding partners form intermolecular hydrogen bonds to water in all three mutants. We compare our results with previous studies of similar mutants in other proteins and reach the following conclusions. (1) Hydrogen bonds contribute favorably to protein stability. (2) The contribution of hydrogen bonds to protein stability is strongly context dependent. (3) Hydrogen bonds by side chains and peptide groups make similar contributions to protein stability. (4) Polar group burial can make a favorable contribution to protein stability even if the polar groups are not hydrogen bonded. (5) The contribution of hydrogen bonds to protein stability is similar for VHP, a small protein, and VlsE, a large protein.

No abstract

Xylanase A from the phytopathogenic bacterium Erwinia chrysanthemi is classified as a glycoside hydrolase family 30 enzyme (previously in family 5) and is specialized for degradation of glucuronoxylan. The recombinant enzyme was crystallized with the aldotetraouronic acid β‐d‐xylopyranosyl‐(1→4)‐[4‐O‐methyl‐α‐d‐glucuronosyl‐(1→2)]‐β‐d‐xylopyranosyl‐(1→4)‐d‐xylose as a ligand. The crystal structure of the enzyme–ligand complex was solved at 1.39 Å resolution. The ligand xylotriose moiety occupies subsites −1, −2 and −3, whereas the methyl glucuronic acid residue attached to the middle xylopyranosyl residue of xylotriose is bound to the enzyme through hydrogen bonds to five amino acids and by the ionic interaction of the methyl glucuronic acid carboxylate with the positively charged guanidinium group of Arg293. The interaction of the enzyme with the methyl glucuronic acid residue appears to be indispensable for proper distortion of the xylan chain and its effective hydrolysis. Such a distortion does not occur with linear β‐1,4‐xylooligosaccharides, which are hydrolyzed by the enzyme at a negligible rate. Database 
Structural and experimental data are available in the Protein Data Bank database under accession number http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/search/structidSearch.do?structureId=2y24 [45].

The contribution of hydrogen bonding by peptide groups to the conformational stability of globular proteins was studied. One of the conserved residues in the microbial ribonuclease (RNase) family is an asparagine at position 39 in RNase Sa, 44 in RNase T1, and 58 in RNase Ba (barnase). The amide group of this asparagine is buried and forms two similar intramolecular hydrogen bonds with a neighboring peptide group to anchor a loop on the surface of all three proteins. Thus, it is a good model for the hydrogen bonding of peptide groups. When the conserved asparagine is replaced with alanine, the decrease in the stability of the mutant proteins is 2.2 (Sa), 1.8 (T1), and 2.7 (Ba) kcal/mol. When the conserved asparagine is replaced by aspartate, the stability of the mutant proteins decreases by 1.5 and 1.8 kcal/mol for RNases Sa and T1, respectively, but increases by 0.5 kcal/mol for RNase Ba. When the conserved asparagine was replaced by serine, the stability of the mutant proteins was decreased by 2.3 and 1.7 kcal/mol for RNases Sa and T1, respectively. The structure of the Asn 39 --> Ser mutant of RNase Sa was determined at 1.7 A resolution. There is a significant conformational change near the site of the mutation: (1) the side chain of Ser 39 is oriented differently than that of Asn 39 and forms hydrogen bonds with two conserved water molecules; (2) the peptide bond of Ser 42 changes conformation in the mutant so that the side chain forms three new intramolecular hydrogen bonds with the backbone to replace three hydrogen bonds to water molecules present in the wild-type structure; and (3) the loss of the anchoring hydrogen bonds makes the surface loop more flexible in the mutant than it is in wild-type RNase Sa. The results show that burial and hydrogen bonding of the conserved asparagine make a large contribution to microbial RNase stability and emphasize the importance of structural information in interpreting stability studies of mutant proteins.