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This study focuses on the modulation of protein aggregation and immunogenicity. As a starting point for investigating long-range interactions within a non-native protein, the effects of perturbing denatured protein states on their aggregation, including the formation of amyloid fibrils, were evaluated. The effects of adducts, sugar modifications, and stabilization on protein aggregation were then examined. We also investigated how protein immunogenicity was affected by enhancing protein conformational stability and other factors.

Intermolecular interactions are key features in the stabilization or destabilization of complexes. In particular, interactions involving aromatic rings have been extensively studied both theoretically and experimentally. Studies have shown that aromatic-aromatic interactions can be categorized by ring-ring orientation into a variety of different types, such as stacking interactions and T-shaped interactions. Because these different orientations affect stabilization, analyses of such interactions, for example ab initio molecular orbital calculations, are applied to pairs of aromatic rings, both in model systems and real systems. An important series of aromatic-aromatic interactions include those between pairs of aromatic residues in proteins. These residues have been studied computationally using both a theoretical chemistry approach and a knowledge-based analys. Protein 3D structural information is essential for knowledge-based studies of aromatic-aromatic interactions in protein-ligand complexes. Some databases filter entries from the Protein Data Bank (PDB) using criteria that make them suitable for computational approaches involving specific research targets. Lanzarotti et al. have shown that aromatic clusters in which three or more aromatic residues are in close proximity to each other are found in many protein structures, expanding pairwise aromatic-aromatic interactions. Moreover, these clusters are thought to be important in terms of protein function, structural stability and ligand recognition. Here, we show that aromatic clusters, as well as individual proteins, are found in a variety of protein-ligand complexes. As such, we anticipate that these clusters might have a significant role in ligand binding and could help in efficient ligand design.

Molecular simulations have been widely used in biomolecular systems such as proteins, DNA, etc. The search for stable conformations of proteins by molecular simulations is important to understand the function and stability of proteins. However, finding the stable state by conformational search is difficult, because the energy landscape of the system is characterized by many local minima separated by high energy barriers. In order to overcome this difficulty, various sampling and optimization methods for the conformation of proteins have been proposed. In this study, we propose a new conformational search method for proteins based on a genetic algorithm. We applied this method to an α-helical protein. We found that the conformations obtained from our simulations are in good agreement with the experimental results.

Dominant mutations in the TDP-43 gene are causative for familial ALS, however, the relationship between mutant protein biochemical phenotypes and disease course and their significance to disease pathomechanism are unclarified. We found that longer half-lives of mutant proteins correlated with accelerated disease onset. Increased stability of TDP-43 protein was also observed in ALS/FTLD linked mutations in RNA recognition motif of TDP-43. Based on our findings, we established a cell model in which chronic stabilization of wild-type TDP-43 protein provoked cytotoxicity and recapitulated pathogenic protein cleavage and insolubility to the detergent sarkosyl, TDP-43 properties that have been observed in the lesions of sporadic ALS. Moreover, these cells expressing stabilized TDP-43 showed proteasomal impairment and dysregulation of their own mRNA levels. These results suggest that chronically increased stability of mutant or wild-type TDP-43 proteins results in a gain of toxicity through abnormal proteostasis.