Five stabilizing agents are able to counteract the destabilizing action of four denaturants, regardless of the chemical structure of the cosolutes.

Differential scanning calorimetry measurements performed on RNase A in aqueous binary solutions containing different concentrations of urea, tetramethylurea, guanidinium chloride, and guanidinium thiocyanate, and in aqueous ternary solutions, containing the same denaturants plus 1 M trimethylamine N-oxide, TMAO, demonstrate that the latter has a general counteracting ability at pH 7.0, but not at pH 4.0. Experimental data rule out the idea that counteraction originates from direct interactions between TMAO molecules and denaturing agents. A rationalization is provided on the basis of a theoretical approach grounded on the solvent-excluded volume effect, whose magnitude depends on the density of aqueous solutions.

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The conformational stability of globular proteins is strongly influenced by the addition to water of different co-solutes. Some of the latter destabilize the native state, while others stabilize it. It is emerging that stabilizing agents are able to counteract the action of destabilizing agents. We have already provided experimental evidence that this counteraction is a general phenomenon and offered a rationalization. In the present work, we show that four different sugars, namely fructose, glucose, sucrose, and trehalose, counteract the effect of urea, tetramethylurea, sodium perchlorate, guanidinium chloride, and guanidinium thiocyanate despite the chemical and structural differences of those destabilizing agents. The rationalization we provide is as follows: (a) the solvent-excluded volume effect, a purely entropic effect, stabilizes the native state, whose solvent-accessible surface area is smaller than the one of denatured conformations; (b) the magnitude of the solvent-excluded volume effect increases markedly in ternary solutions because the experimental density of such solutions is larger than that of pure water.

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