The
interaction of VIVO2+ ion and five VIVOL2 compounds with potential pharmacological application,
where L indicates maltolate (ma), kojate (koj), acetylacetonate (acac),
1,2-dimethyl-3-hydroxy-4(1H)-pyridinonate (dhp),
and l-mimosinate (mim), with ubiquitin (Ub) was studied by
EPR, ESI-MS, and computational (docking and DFT) methods. The free
metal ion VIVO2+ interacts with Glu, Asp, His,
Thr, and Leu residues, but the most stable sites (named 1 and 2) involve the coordination of (Glu16, Glu18) and
(Glu24, Asp52). In the system with VIVOL2 compounds,
the type of binding depends on the vanadium concentration. When the
concentration is in the mM range, the binding occurs with cis-VOL2(H2O), L = ma, koj, dhp, and
mim, or with VO(acac)2: in the first case, the equatorial
coordination of His68, Glu16, Glu18, or Asp21 residues yields species
with formula n[VOL2]–Ub where n = 2–3, while with VO(acac)2 only noncovalent
surface interactions are revealed. When the concentration of V is
on the order of micromolar, the mono-chelated species VOL(H2O)2
+ with L = ma, koj, acac, dhp, and mim,
favored by the hydrolysis, interact with Ub, and adducts with composition n[VOL]–Ub (n = 1–2) are observed
with the contemporaneous coordination of (Glu18, Asp21) or (Glu16,
Glu18), and (Glu24, Asp52) or (Glu51, Asp52) donors. The results of
this work suggest that the combined application of spectroscopic,
spectrometric, and computational techniques allow the complete characterization
of the ternary systems formed by a V compound and a model protein
such as ubiquitin. The same approach can be applied, eventually changing
the spectroscopic/spectrometric techniques, to study the interaction
of other metal species with other proteins.