Folding and conformational studies on SCR1-3 domains of human complement receptor 1

Short consensus repeats SCR3 and SCR1-3 are soluble recombinantproteins, consisting of the third and first three N-terminaldomains of complement receptor 1, respectively, which retainsome anti-complement activity. The conformational stabilitiesand folding/unfolding of SCR3 and SCR1-3 have been studied usingcircular dichroism and equilibrium and pre-equilibrium fluorescencespectroscopy. Denaturation by guanidinium hydrochloride (GdnHCl)is rapid and completely reversible. Reduction of disulphidebridges in the folded proteins by ß-mercaptoethanolleads to an increase in fluorescence intensity. The fluorescenceintensity of the folded proteins is {small tilde}7.5% of thatof the respective unfolded proteins. The data can be approximatedto a two-state transition between native and denatured formsof the proteins. SCR3 has a conformational stability in waterof 12–13 kJ/mol whereas that of SCR1-3 is 19.5–19.9kJ/mol depending upon the technique utilized. The heat capacitychange associated with the unfolding of SCR1-3 was obtainedby a series of GdnHCl unfolding experiments over a range oftemperatures and was found to be 6.6 kJ/K.mol or 33.8 J/K.mol_residue.The refolding process of SCR3 was found to be simple, describedby a single exponential equation, whereas that of SCR1-3 wasfound to be complex and could be fitted to a double exponentialequation indicating the presence of folding intermediates.