I agree completely with Anastassis that the equilibrium will be effected by changing the concentration of the sample during gel filtration, however I wanted to point out that the elution volumes of the two species are independent of their populations. I apologize if I was misleading.
Mike ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anastassis Perrakis" <a.perra...@nki.nl> To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:10:16 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] monomer-dimer Dear all, If I may add that I find the statement "First, remember that gel filtration elution volumes are independent of conditions like flow rate and protein concentration (unless there are nonspecific interactions at high concentration), but like I described before temp is a factor." a bit misleading. While concentration will not change where the monomer or the dimer appears in the elution volume, concentration will affect the monomer-dimer equilibrium during your gel-filtration run. Thus, I would say that concentration is a factor. If your dimer has a kD of ~100uM, and you inject it at a concentration of ~100uM, after getting diluted during gel-filtration (about ten-fold) it will appear >90% as a monomer ... The results of any analytical technique to determine stoichiometry are concentration dependent, and concentration is actually the major variable that needs to be considered to define the oligomerization state (in AUC this can be done nicely). And do not forget that the in-vitro oligomerization state does not necessarily imply the same for in vivo, so please do make mutants to prove it before submitting the paper ... A. On Aug 10, 2010, at 1:38, Bostjan Kobe wrote: Dear Intekhab Let me just add to this that gel filtration is not an accurate method for determination of molecular mass, because the migration on the column depends on the shape of the protein. The following methods can be used to determine molecular mass irrespective of shape: - MALLS (multi-angle laser light scattering or static light sxattering) - sedimentation equilibrium on analytical ultracentrifuge (AUC) - native mass spectrometry For a short recent review on issues associated with determining oligomeric state from crystal structures, with older references and relevant bioinformatic tools cited in there, please see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19021571 Bostjan On 10/08/10 6:26 AM, "Maia Cherney" <ch...@ualberta.ca> wrote: To determine the oligomeric state of a protein (monomer or dimer in your case), it's useful to use the PISA server. You upload your pdb file from the crystal structure.The server calculates the areas of interfaces (buried area) and deltaG (change in Gibbs energy) upon oligomer dissociation. (E. Krissinel and K. Henrick (2007). /Inference of macromolecular assemblies from crystalline state/. J. Mol. Biol. *372*, 774--797 . E. Krissinel and K. Henrick (2005). /Detection of Protein Assemblies in Crystals/. In: M.R. Berthold /et.al./ (Eds.): CompLife 2005, LNBI 3695, pp. 163--174 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/11560500_15>. E. Krissinel (2009). /Crystal contacts as nature's docking solutions/. J. Comp. Chem., in press; published on-line 6 May 2009; DOI 10.1002/jcc.21303} If the interface area (divided by 2 per one protomer) is greater than 1000 A2 and delta G is more than 5kcal/mol (the higher the better), it's a dimer. However, don't forget that most dimers can dissociate into monomers upon dilution. There is a dynamic equilibrium between dimers (oligomers) and monomers that depends on their concentration and the Kdiss. Separating them in any method will disturb this equilibrium. If the re-equilibration time is greater than the separation time, you can see both monomers and dimers. You can even roughly calculate the dissociation constant: Kdiss=[monomer]2/[dimer] where brackets mean concentrations. To give you an estimate, at Kdiss=10(-3)M, you have roughly equal concentration of dimers and monomers at 10-3 M and only 10% dimers at 10-4 M. Sometimes, protein needs to dissociate easily for the biological function. Maia intekhab alam wrote: Hi everyone Sorry for some non specific query!!!!! i am working with a protein that shows a dimer in the crystal structure but when i tried to figure out that with standard molecular markers in gel filteration (superdex-200, 24ml column) it turned out to be a monnomer. Native gel analysis after incubating the protein at 20 degree, 37 degree showed more dimer at 20 degree celcius as compared to 37. I tried similar strategy in gel filteration by incubating my protein at various temperature,where a lot of precipitation was observed at 37 degree celcius and after removing the precipitates i run the gel filteration that has 0.5 ml higher elution volume as compared to samples incubated at 20 degree celcius and 4 degree celcius.( Is this significant) Furthermore i have done some experiments in cold room (4 degree) where the elution volume is stuck at a point irrespective of the conditions (as Flow rate, concentration of protein etc) and that is higher than that of the room temperature by 1 ml. Standard moleculr weight markers also show higher elution volume in cold room in comparison to the room temperature by 1 ml. I will be highly obliged if someone suggest some literature or any otherway to do gel filtrtaion so that i can clearly resolve this issue. Also let me know if there is some literature available on effect of temperature on the elution volume of proteins. Thanks in advance -- INTEKHAB ALAM LABORATORY OF STRUCTURAL BIOINFORMATICS KOREA UNIVERSITY, SEOUL --- Bostjan Kobe ARC Federation Fellow Professor of Structural Biology School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences and Institute for Molecular Bioscience (Division of Chemistry and Structural Biology) and Centre for Infectious Disease Research Cooper Road University of Queensland Brisbane, Queensland 4072 Australia Phone: +61 7 3365 2132 Fax: +61 7 3365 4699 E-mail: b.k...@uq.edu.au URL: http://profiles.bacs.uq.edu.au/Bostjan.Kobe.html Office: Building 76 Room 329 Notice: If you receive this e-mail by mistake, please notify me, and do not make any use of its contents. I do not waive any privilege, confidentiality or copyright associated with it. Unless stated otherwise, this e-mail represents only the views of the Sender and not the views of The University of Queensland. P please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to Anastassis (Tassos) Perrakis, Principal Investigator / Staff Member Department of Biochemistry (B8) Netherlands Cancer Institute, Dept. B8, 1066 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands Tel: +31 20 512 1951 Fax: +31 20 512 1954 Mobile / SMS: +31 6 28 597791 -- Michael C. Thompson Graduate Student Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Division Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry University of California, Los Angeles mi...@chem.ucla.edu