Browsing by Author "Kiick, Kristi L."

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Citation - WoS: 25
Citation - Scopus: 25
Conformational and Aggregation Properties of a Pegylated Alanine-Rich Polypeptide
(American Chemical Society, 2011-06) Top, Ayben; Roberts, Christopher J.; Kiick, Kristi L.; 03.02. Department of Chemical Engineering; 03. Faculty of Engineering; 01. Izmir Institute of Technology
The conformational and aggregation behavior of PEG conjugates of an alanine-rich polypeptide (PEG-c17H6) were investigated and compared to that of the polypeptide equipped with a deca-histidine tag (17H6). These polypeptides serve as simple and stimuli-responsive models for the aggregation behavior of helix-rich proteins, as our previous studies have shown that the helical 17H6 self-associates at acidic pH and converts to β-sheet structures at elevated temperature under acidic conditions. In the work here, we show that PEG-c17H6 also adopts a helical structure at ambient/subambient temperatures, at both neutral and acidic pH. The thermal denaturation behavior of 17H6 and PEG-c17H6 is similar at neutral pH, where the alanine-rich domain has no self-association tendency. At acidic pH and elevated temperature, however, PEGylation slows β-sheet formation of c17H6, and reduces the apparent cooperativity of thermally induced unfolding. Transmission electron microscopy of PEG-c17H6 conjugates incubated at elevated temperatures showed fibrils with widths of ∼20-30 nm, wider than those observed for fibrils of 17H6. These results suggest that PEGylation reduces β-sheet aggregation in these polypeptides by interfering, only after unfolding of the native helical structure, with interprotein conformational changes needed to form β-sheet aggregates.
Citation - WoS: 12
Citation - Scopus: 12
Controlling Assembly of Helical Polypeptides Via Pegylation Strategies
(Royal Society of Chemistry, 2011-10-21) Top, Ayben; Zhong, Sheng; Yan, Congqi; Roberts, Christopher J.; Pochan, Darrin J.; Kiick, Kristi L.; 03.02. Department of Chemical Engineering; 03. Faculty of Engineering; 01. Izmir Institute of Technology
Recent studies in our laboratories have demonstrated that a helical polypeptide (17H6), equipped with a histidine tag and a helical alanine-rich, glutamic-acid-containing domain, exhibits pH-responsive assembly behavior useful in the production of polymorphological nanostructures. In this study, the histidine tag in these polypeptides was replaced by polyethylene glycol (PEG) with different molecular masses (5 kDa, or 10 kDa), and the self-association behavior of 17H6 and the PEGylated conjugates was characterized via dynamic light scattering (DLS), small angle neutron scattering (SANS), and cryogenic transmission electron microscopy (cryo-TEM). DLS experiments illustrated that the polypeptide and its PEG-conjugates undergo reversible assembly under acidic conditions, suggesting that the aggregation state of the polypeptide and the conjugates is controlled by the charged state of the glutamic acid residues. Nanoscale aggregates were detected at polypeptide/conjugate concentrations as low as 20 μM (∼0.3-0.5 mg ml -1) at physiological and ambient temperatures. Scattering and microscopy results showed that the size, the aggregation number, and the morphology of the aggregates can be tuned by the size and the nature of the hydrophilic tag. This tunable nature of the morphology of the aggregates, along with their low critical aggregation concentration, suggests that PEG-alanine-rich polypeptide conjugates may be useful as drug delivery vehicles in which the alanine-rich block serves as a drug attachment domain.