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Sequence heuristics to encode phase behaviour in intrinsically disordered protein polymers

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 1164–1171 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Proteins and synthetic polymers that undergo aqueous phase transitions mediate self-assembly in nature and in man-made material systems. Yet little is known about how the phase behaviour of a protein is encoded in its amino acid sequence. Here, by synthesizing intrinsically disordered, repeat proteins to test motifs that we hypothesized would encode phase behaviour, we show that the proteins can be designed to exhibit tunable lower or upper critical solution temperature (LCST and UCST, respectively) transitions in physiological solutions. We also show that mutation of key residues at the repeat level abolishes phase behaviour or encodes an orthogonal transition. Furthermore, we provide heuristics to identify, at the proteome level, proteins that might exhibit phase behaviour and to design novel protein polymers consisting of biologically active peptide repeats that exhibit LCST or UCST transitions. These findings set the foundation for the prediction and encoding of phase behaviour at the sequence level.

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Figure 1: The amino acid sequence of Pro- and Gly-rich proteins is characterized by discrete arrangements of Pro and Gly residues.
Figure 2: Protein polymers with repeating P–Xn–G motifs (n = 0–4) can be designed to exhibit LCST or UCST phase behaviour under physiologically relevant conditions.
Figure 3: Intrinsically disordered protein polymers can be designed to exhibit LCST or UCST phase behaviour under a wide range of conditions.
Figure 4: The phase transition behaviour of IDPPs is tunable.
Figure 5: A zwitterionic IDPP that is devoid of aromatic residues exhibits UCST phase behaviour in acidic environments.
Figure 6: IDPPs built from biologically active peptide repeats.

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Acknowledgements

F.G.Q. thanks K. Zhu for his assistance with the preparation of Fig. 4d. This work was funded by the NIH through grant # GM061232 to A.C. and by the NSF through the Research Triangle MRSEC (NSF DMR-11-21107).

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  1. Felipe García Quiroz

    Present address: Present address: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robin Chemers Neustein Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York 10065, USA.,

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  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA

    Felipe García Quiroz & Ashutosh Chilkoti

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  1. Felipe García Quiroz
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F.G.Q. designed and performed experiments, analysed data and wrote the manuscript. A.C. analysed data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ashutosh Chilkoti.

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The authors hold US patent no. 8,470,967 that covers many of the peptide sequences described in this Article.

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Quiroz, F., Chilkoti, A. Sequence heuristics to encode phase behaviour in intrinsically disordered protein polymers. Nature Mater 14, 1164–1171 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4418

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