Medicinal-Pharmaceutical Chemistry Commons^™

Investigation Of The Effects Of Ionic Interactions In Peptide And Protein Structure, Aimee Lorts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Proteins and their unique structures are important due to their involvement in every cellular task, but the protein can only function properly when it is in the correct fold. β-sheet peptides and collagen were observed via structural studies. Circular dichroism (CD) determines a protein’s secondary structure. WKWK, a beta-sheet peptide, is known to dissolve in aqueous solutions. However, WKWK was observed to precipitate out of deionized water. To investigate the cause of this precipitation, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP-MS) was used to determine the ion content of the water. Elevated sodium ion concentrations were found to disrupt the stabilizing …