Abstract: The acidic transition of porcine plasminogen, prepared by affinity chromatography, was studied by non-destructive methods. These methods are based on the analysis of the behaviour of the tryptophyls under various conditions. The perturbation of the absorption and emission spectra by pH or temperature and the dynamic quenching of the intrinsic fluorescence are used to obtain information on structural changes which affect the environment of these residues. It is shown that by decreasing pH the fluorescence emission spectra are shifted toward the long wavelengths, with a broadening of the fluorescence band. The same effect can be obtained at constant pH by heating the protein solution. In order to analyze these phenomena, it is assumed that the fluorescence intensities at 355 nm and 328 nm reflect the proportion of the tryptophans which are exposed to the solvent, and buried, respectively. The plot of the ratio of the fluorescence intensities at these wavelengths versus pH or temperature leads to a titration curve showing an unmasking of tryptophans. The proportion of exposed tryptophans is measured by the dynamic fluorescence quenching technique and the data analyzed according to Lehrer. The plot of the fraction of exposed tryptophyls versus pH also shows the unmasking of these chromophores. Thermal perturbation of a solution of plaminogen at neutral pH induces a difference absorption spectrum whose amplitudes at the maxima are proportional to the number of exposed aromatic residues. The comparison with a solution of fully denatured plasminogen in 6 M guanidium chloride, where all the tryptophyls are exposed, shows that the percentage of exposure is equal to 59%. This number is significantly higher than the percentage found by the fluorescence quenching technique (20%), indicating that some tryptophyls are located in crevices, exposed to the solvent but not to the iodide. At acidic pH the absorption difference spectra induced by thermal perturbation are not classical, since they show an inversion and a new band between 300 nm and 305 nm. This band is mentioned in the literature as a minor band of tryptophan which appears when this chromophore is located in an asymmetric environment. On plotting the maximum amplitude of these spectra obtained at acidic pH versus temperature, we obtain a curve indicating that two types of antagonistic interactions are involved in the perturbation of the chromophores spectra. The spectrophotometric titration of plasminogen gives classical absorption difference spectra. By plotting the maximum amplitude at 292 nm versus pH, we obtain a titration curve with an apparent pK of 2.9 units. This pK is acidic which respect to the pK value of a normal carboxyl. This low value can be due to a positively charged group in the neighbourhood of a carboxyl, which interacts with one or more chromophores. When the carboxyl becomes protonated, this positively charged group is free and available to perturb the environment of some chromophores...

Abstract: The oxidation-reduction reaction of horse heart cytochrome c and cytochrome c (552, Thermus thermophilus), which is highly thermoresistant, was studied by temperature-jump method. Ferrohexacyanide was used as reductant. (Formula: see text.) Thermodynamic and activation parameters of the reaction obtained for both cytochromes were compared with each other. The results of this showed that (1) the redox potential of cytochrome c-552, + 0.19 V, is markedly less than that of horse heart cytochrome c. (2) deltaHox of cytochrome c-552 is considerably lower than that of horse heart cytochrome c. (3) deltaSox and deltaSred of cytochrome c-552 are more negative than those of horse heart cytochrome c. (4) kred of cytochrome c-552 is much lower than that of horse heart cytochrome c at room temperature.

Abstract: The dynamic behavior of various types of cytochromes c in the redox reaction with iron hexacyanides was studied using a temperature-jump method in order to elucidate the molecular mechanism of the redox reaction of cytochromes with their oxidoreductants. Transmittance after the temperature jump changed through a single exponential decay for all cytochromes investigated. Under a constant concentration of anion, the redox reaction of various types of cytochrome c with iron hexacyanides was analyzed according to the scheme: Ki=kt/k-i (i=1,2,3) where C(III) and C(II) are ferric and ferrous cytochromes, respectively, Fe(III) and Fe(II) are ferri- and ferrocyanides, respectively, C(III) [middle dot] Fe(II) is the ferricytochrome-ferrocyanide complex and C(II) [middle dot] Fe(III) is the ferrocytochrome-ferricyanide complex. When step B is slower than the other two steps A and C, τ-1 can be represented approximately as where the bar over the variables denotes the equilibrium value. In a large excess of ferrocyanide against cytochrome, we can estimate k2, k-2, K1 and K3 independently. In the case of horse cytochrome c at 18[degree sign]C in 0.1 M phosphate buffer at pH 7 with 0.3 M KNO3, the estimated parameters are k2 = 100 +/- 50 s-1, k-2 = (3.5 +/- 1.0) [middle dot] 103 s-1, K1 = 15 +/- 7 M-1 and K3 = (8.5 +/- 1.5) [middle dot] 10-4 M. From the same experiments for seven cytochromes (cytochrome c from horse, tuna, Candida krusei, Saccharomyces oviformis, Rhodospirillum rubrum cytochrome c2, Spirulina platensis cytochrome c-554 and Thermus thermophilus cytochrome c-552), the following results can be deduced. (1) Each parameter defined in the scheme above (k2, k-2, K1, K3) diverged beyond the error range. Above all, k2 values of cytochromes c-554 and c-552 are as large as 1 [middle dot] 104 s-1 and much larger than those for the other cytochromes (to 50 approx. 700 S-1). (2) The variance of k2K1 and k-2/K3 are relatively less than the variances of individual parameters (k2, k-2, K1 and K3), which suggests that the values of k2K1 and k-2/K3 have been conserved during the course of evolution.