The effects of arginine on refolding of aggregated proteins: not facilitate refolding, but suppress aggregation ☆

July 28, 2017

Title

The effects of arginine on refolding of aggregated proteins: not facilitate refolding, but suppress aggregation ☆

Author

Tsutomu Arakawa, Kouhei Tsumoto

Year

2003

Journal

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

Abstract

Arginine is one of the universal reagents that are effective in assisting refolding of recombinant proteins from inclusion bodies. The mechanism of the effects of arginine on refolding has remained, however, to be elucidated. Here we show that arginine does not stabilize proteins against heat treatment, as demonstrated by little change in melting temperature. It does increase reversibility of thermal melting and reduce aggregation under thermal stress. The observations suggest that arginine may not facilitate refolding, but may suppress aggregation of the proteins during refolding.

Instrument

J-710

Keywords

Circular dichroism, Secondary structure, Thermal stability, Thermodynamics, Protein folding, Ligand binding, Tertiary structure, Aggregation, Biochemistry