Local interactions and the role of the 6-120 disulfide bond in α- lactalbumin: Implications for formation of the molten globule state

Molten globule states are partially folded states of proteins which are compact and contain a high degree of secondary structure but which lack many of the fixed tertiary interactions associated with the native state. A set of peptides has been prepared in order to probe the role of local interactions in the vicinity of the Cys⁶-Cys¹²⁰ disulfide bond in stabilizing the molten globule state of human α-lactalbumin. Peptides derived from the N- terminal and C-terminal regions of human α-lactalbumin have been analyzed using nuclear magnetic resonance, circular dichroism, fluorescence spectroscopy and sedimentation equilibrium experiments. A peptide corresponding to the first helical region in the native protein, residues 1- 13, is only slightly helical in isolation. Extending the peptide to include residues 14-18 results in a modest increase in helicity. A peptide derived from the C-terminal 12 residues, residues 112-123, is predominantly unstructured. Crosslinking the N- and C-terminal peptides by the native disulfide bond results in almost no increase in structure and there is no evidence for any significant cooperative structure formation over the range of pH 2.2-11.7. These results demonstrate that there is very little enhancement of local structure due to the formation of the Cys⁶-Cys¹²⁰ disulfide bond. This is in striking contrast to peptides derived from the region of the Cys²⁸-Cys¹¹¹ disulfide.