Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Hofmeister series and protein-salt interactions

2006; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 124; Issue: 23 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.2206174

1520-9032

Seishi Shimizu, William McLaren, Nobuyuki Matubayasi,

Protein Structure and Dynamics

In order to understand the origin of the Hofmeister series, a statistical-mechanical analysis, based upon the Kirkwood-Buff (KB) theory, has been performed to extract information regarding protein hydration and water-mediated protein-salt interactions from published experimental data—preferential hydration and volumetric data for bovine serum albumin in the presence of a wide range of salts. The analysis showed a linear correlation between the preferential hydration parameter and the protein-cosolvent KB parameter. The same linear correlation holds even when nonelectrolyte cosolvents, such as polyethelene glycol, have been incorporated. These results suggest that the Hofmeister series is due to a wide variation of the water-mediated protein-cosolvent interaction (but not the change of protein hydration) and that this mechanism is a special case of a more general scenario common even to the macromolecular crowding.