On the Zwitterionic Nature of Gas-Phase Peptides and Protein Ions
[['Predicting the structural properties of proteins in the gas phase is crucial to interpret mass spectrometry data , yet this is far from being understood [1]–[10] .', 'So far , it has been established that', '( i ) compact structures acquire smaller net charges than unfolded ones [11]–[13] ,', '( ii ) secondary and tertiary structure elements play a crucial role for protein fragmentation [14]–[23] , and', '( iii ) hydrogen bonds ( H-bonds ) and salt-bridges [3] , [24] , [25] may stabilize the structures .', 'However , how desolvation impacts on structural facets of proteins [2] , [3] , [8] , [26]–[30] , peptides [3] , [31]–[35] and even single amino acids [36]–[45] is matter of a vivid debate .', 'A key point is the presence of charge separation .', 'Whilst amino acids exist mostly in their zwitterionic form in the aqueous solution [31] , [36] , [40] , [46] , conflicting assumptions and conclusions have been drawn for the same molecules in vacuo [47]–[50] .', 'For peptides and proteins , the key issue of the charge state of ionizable groups , presumably different from that in solution , is even less clear [2] , [51]–[53] .', 'One line of thought assumes neutral acidic functions for proteins analyzed in positive-ion mode ( i . e . , generating and detecting positively charged ions ) and neutral basic sites in negative-ion mode .', 'In other words , the number of ionized groups is generally assumed to be equal to the net charge of the protein ion [54]–[56] .', 'Electrostatic energy calculations based on this supposition fail to reproduce experimental values of apparent gas-phase basicity ( GPB ) for folded protein ions [57] .', 'The GPB of a basic species B is defined as the negative of the free-energy change , , for the gas-phase protonation reactionIf B is the conjugate base of an acid AH , then , where GA is the gas-phase acidity of AH .', 'Analogously , the proton affinity is defined as the negative of the protonation enthalpy , PA\u200a=\u200a− .', 'In contrast , an increasing number of experimental [16] , [24] , [25] , [58]–[61] and theoretical [62] , [63] investigations carried out on peptides and small proteins indicate that zwitterionic states may survive in the absence of solvent if the structural features allow for adequate intramolecular solvation [64]–[67] .', 'Recent ultraviolet photo-dissociation [16] and fluorescence [25] , [61] experiments indicate the presence of stabilizing salt-bridge motifs in small biomolecules .', 'Salt bridges exist also in protonated , gas-phase serine dimers [24] and have been predicted for arginine dimers [63] , [68] , [69] .', 'These interactions add to other stabilizing contributions such as hydrogen bonds [3] , [24] , [25] .', 'Molecular dynamics ( MD ) simulations on a minimalistic lattice model of a zwitterionic system [1] turned out to reproduce the experimental observation that compact structures acquire smaller net charges than unfolded ones [11]–[13] .', 'On the basis of these simulations , it has been also proposed that steric and electrostatic shielding of charged residues in compact conformations are the major factors responsible for this structural facet .', 'Energy calculations [2] , [7] , [52] and measurements [51] , [70] on several well characterized proteins in their experimentally observed , most populated charge state suggest that the presence of zwitterions depends on the specific protein structure [2] , [51] .', 'Deprotonated aspartic and glutamic residues persist in the most abundant , positively charged protomer of insulin , the C-terminal domain of the ribosomal protein L7/L12 and ubiquitin , but not in tryptophan-cage and lysozyme [2] .', 'Prompted by the current lack of understanding of the charge state of protein ions in vacuo , here we have carried out an exhaustive energy analysis on three systems largely studied in the gas phase both experimentally [16] , [25] , [59] , [60] , [71]–[77] and theoretically [52] , [62] , [63] , [72] .', 'These are the 8-residue peptide angiotensin II ( AN ) [74]–[76] and the 9-residue peptide bradykinin ( BK ) [16] , [59] , [62] , [63] , [71]–[73] , as well as the tryptophan-cage ( Trp-cage ) [16] , [25] , [52] , [60] , [77] protein .', 'The latter is a 20-residue mini-protein with a well defined secondary and tertiary structure in aqueous solution at ambient conditions .', 'It consists of an -helix and a compact hydrophobic core formed by a Trp side chain from the -helix , surrounded by several hydrophobic residues ( two prolines and one tyrosine ) [78] .', 'A complete exploration of the protomer space ( i . e . , all of the possible charge configurations compatible with a given charge state ) of these biomolecules is performed coupling force field–based molecular dynamics and density functional theory ( DFT ) calculations .', 'In contrast to previous computational studies [25] , [31] , [52] , [62] , [63] , [79] , [80] , all of the charge states generated by ionized and/or neutral basic ( R , K , H , Q , N-terminus ) and acidic groups ( E , D , C-terminus ) , featuring more than one protomer , are taken into account .', 'A computational protocol apt to this task has been developed , allowing for an exhaustive exploration of the conformational space of each protomer .', 'Based on such protocol , we suggest that low-charge states are likely zwitterions .', 'In those cases , H-bonds and salt-bridges stabilize largely zwitterionic states , considerably reducing the differences in the apparent GPB between basic residues and the conjugated base of acidic residues .', 'At high net charge , instead , non-zwitterion states are most likely .'], ['The sequences of BK , AN and Trp-cage are RPPGFSPFR , DRVYIHPF , NLYIQWLKDGGPSSGRPPPS , respectively .', 'For each system , the following protonation sites were considered: , , N- and C-term for BK; , , , N- and C-term for AN ( in the neutral state can be protonated either in or , both tautomers were considered ) ; , , , , and N- and C-term for Trp-cage .', 'In the latter , protonation of was considered for the and charge states on the basis of experimental evidences [19] .', 'BK and AN have no determined secondary structure and all of the calculations started with an all-trans backbone and side-chain conformation .', 'Instead , the Trp-cage initial structure was obtained by a 20-ns MD simulation in aqueous solution at ambient conditions based on the NMR structure number 1 deposited in the protein data bank ( PDB code: 1L2Y ) [78] ( see Text S1 ) .', 'The most probable protonation state in water [78] was chosen .', 'For the chosen set of protonation sites , all of the charge states which feature more than one protomer were taken into account .', 'For these charge states , all of the possible protomers were considered , for a total of 100 protomers ( see Tables 1 , 2 , and 3 ) .', 'OPLS/AA force field-based [81] , [82] , constant-temperature MD calculations and geometry optimizations were carried out .', 'The cutoff of electrostatics and van der Waals interactions was fixed at 0 . 7nm .', 'In the MD simulations , the equations of motion were numerically integrated with a time step of 1 . 5 fs .', 'All the hydrogen-bond lengths were kept fixed using the LINCS [83] algorithm .', 'The temperature was controlled by the Nosé-Hoover thermostat [84] .', 'The results of force field based MD simulations depend critically on the charge state used .', 'Therefore , we performed a simulation for each protonation state .', 'Specifically 8-ns MD simulations at high-temperature ( 700K for AN and BK , 350K for Trp-cage ) were performed for each protonation state .', 'The chosen temperatures were selected after several careful tests .', 'In particular , for Trp-cage , a temperature of 350K turns out to allow for an exhaustive sampling of the side chains conformations without disrupting , in the relatively short simulation time , the secondary structure .', 'The resulting trajectories were split into 5-ps , non overlapping time windows .', 'For each window , the geometry of the lowest-energy MD conformation was optimized by a conjugated gradient scheme up to 0 . 1 kJ/molÅ residual force on any atom .', 'This simulated annealing-like procedure yielded for each protomer a large set of conformations .', 'The geometry of structures within 100 kJ/mol ( 60 kJ/mol for Trp-cage ) from the lowest-energy force field conformer were refined at the ab initio level ( see Section “Identifying relevant protomers of a given charge state” ) .', 'With this criterion , 60 conformers ( 35 for Trp-cage ) , were randomly selected from equally spaced energy windows , one from each window , and re-optimized at DFT/BLYP level of theory .', 'The GROMACS [85] software package was used for all MD calculations .', 'Quantum-chemical geometry optimizations were performed within the framework of DFT .', 'The Becke exchange [86] and Lee-Yang-Parr [87] correlation functionals ( BLYP ) were used in a hybrid Gaussian and plane wave approach [88] .', 'The wave function was optimized by using an orbital transformation technique [89] and analytic Goedecker-Teter-Hutter [90] , [91] pseudopotentials ( PP ) .', 'The TZV2P Gaussian basis set was used for valence electrons of all atoms , while the auxiliary electron density was expanded in plane waves up to a cutoff of 280 Ry .', 'The interaction between periodic images in the reciprocal space was removed according to the decoupling scheme presented in [92] .', 'The calculations were carried out with the CP2K code [89] , [93] , [94] , which has been shown to be very efficient for these systems .', 'The adopted DFT scheme was validated against more accurate ( and more expensive ) quantum chemistry methods .', 'First , the relative energy of canonical and zwitterionic arginine conformers calculated with the present scheme agrees well with that obtained from all-electrons B3LYP , MP2 , and CCSD calculations ( see Table 2 in Text S1 ) .', 'Second , all of the 14 protomers of AN with total charge underwent all-electrons , single-point energy evaluations at DFT/B3LYP level with the 6–311++G ( d , p ) basis set using the Gaussian03 code [95] ( Angiotensin II was chosen because it is the smallest of the three molecules studied and , in particular , the charge state was considered because it presents the largest set of protomers , and it is , therefore , a good benchmark case ) .', 'These and the previous calculations provided the same energy ranking ( see Table 3 in Text S1 ) .', 'A final concern for using DFT for non-covalent systems is the underestimation of dispersion forces [96] , [97] .', 'This flaw of the current GGA functionals might influence the conformational energy , especially in the case of large molecular assemblies like those considered here .', 'To quantify this error an estimate of the dispersion energy was performed for the DFT optimized structures using the OPLS/AA force field .', 'The results of this calculation ( see Tables 4 , 5 and 6 in Text S1 ) indicate that the dispersion energy is not expected to change qualitatively the DFT energy ranking of protomers .'], ['A standard procedure to identify the relevant protomers is currently lacking , even for peptides with more than a few amino-acids .', 'On the one hand , the high complexity of the conformational space hampers an exhaustive search based on first-principle quantum chemistry ( such as DFT ) of the minimum-energy conformers .', 'On the other hand , force field–based calculations [62] , [63] , [98] , [99] , or semiempirical quantum chemical methods [52] , may not be accurate enough .', 'For instance , Merck molecular force field [100] energies have been shown to correlate poorly with those calculated at the DFT/B3LYP level [62] , [63] .', 'In addition , the energies calculated by force fields do not take into account higher-order effects , which may play a role in our systems .', 'DFT can , instead , take such effects into account .', 'However , if the empirically calculated conformer is much higher in energy than another ( say with a greater than few hundreds of kJ/mol ) , it will be highly probable that the same ranking holds at the ab initio level ( see Figure 1 in Text S1 ) .', 'Here , we seek such value by performing MD simulations based on the OPLS/AA , which offers the most complete set of base/conjugate acid pairs .', 'The calculations on the three systems in vacuo provided several hundreds conformations , which then underwent DFT/BLYP [86] , [87] geometry optimizations .', 'Such quantum chemical scheme is extremely efficient for large molecules , as those investigated here [101] , [102] .', 'We found that less than 5% of the ab initio conformers located within 10kJ/mol from the energy minimum fall more than =\u200a100kJ/mol ( 60kJ/mol for Trp-cage ) above the OPLS/AA minimum ( see Figure 2 in Text S1 ) .', 'Exploiting this fact , we used the ensuing protocol to identify the lowest-energy minimum for each charge state for each peptide:', '( i ) generation of conformers for all possible protomers by OPLS/AA MD and simulated annealing-like calculations;', '( ii ) elimination of conformers whose energy is larger than from the absolute minimum;', '( iii ) DFT/BLYP geometry optimization of the conformers within ;', '( iv ) ranking of the conformers based on their DFT energies .', 'Errors of this protocol are associated with', '( i ) the accuracy of the DFT approach ,', '( ii ) limitations of sampling and (', 'iii ) absence of entropy contributions .', 'This points are discussed in the following .', 'We therefore conclude that the ranking obtained with our protocol provides a reliable identification of the most stable protomers .', 'We discuss here the salient structural data of the low-energy protomers identified with the protocol outlined above for each system and for every charge state that features , according to our choice of ionizable residues , more than one protomer .', 'More details and additional observations can be found in Text S1 .', 'Structural data for each protomer of the considered charge states are reported in Tables 1 , 2 , and 3 .', 'Our calculations suggest that most of the low-charge states are zwitterions , whilst high charge states might not .', 'We now analyze the key factors for the stabilization of these two different states .'], ['A computational protocol aimed at identifying the most stable species of angiotensin II , bradykinin , and tryptophan-cage has been developed and may be easily extended to other systems of similar size .', 'The protocol provides results fully consistent with the experimental data .', 'The results suggest that most of the low-charge states are zwitterions .', 'Intramolecular interactions can stabilize zwitterionic states considerably , by reducing the differences in apparent GPB between basic residues and the conjugated base of acidic residues Based on a combined structural and energetic analysis , we suggest that salt-bridges provide a key energetic stabilization , in agreement with previous findings [3] , [38] , [51] , [63] , [116] .', 'Indeed , the stabilization due to salt bridging might be such to reduce enormously the GPB of the biomolecules considered in the present study ( up to 900 kJ/mol ) .', 'H-bonding also has an important role in promoting charge separation .', 'As a result , networks are formed where two ( or more ) salt bridges are clustered together , whenever it is possible .', 'Thus , we further corroborate the hypothesis that deprotonated carboxylate groups can be maintained in gas-phase peptide and protein ions produced by electrospray in positive-ion mode ( and , vice-versa , protonated basic groups in negative-ion mode ) [1] , [2] , [30] , [38] , [39] , [62] , [63] , [111] .', 'On the other hand , the formation of zwitterionic species in high charge states requires the protonation of residues with progressively lower GPB , which is accompanied by a large thermodynamic penalty that might not be compensated by internal solvation .']]
['Introduction', 'Methods', 'Results', 'Discussion']
['Determining the total number of charged residues corresponding to a given value of net charge for peptides and proteins in gas phase is crucial for the interpretation of mass-spectrometry data , yet it is far from being understood .', 'Here we show that a novel computational protocol based on force field and massive density functional calculations is able to reproduce the experimental facets of well investigated systems , such as angiotensin II , bradykinin , and tryptophan-cage .', 'The protocol takes into account all of the possible protomers compatible with a given charge state .', 'Our calculations predict that the low charge states are zwitterions , because the stabilization due to intramolecular hydrogen bonding and salt-bridges can compensate for the thermodynamic penalty deriving from deprotonation of acid residues .', 'In contrast , high charge states may or may not be zwitterions because internal solvation might not compensate for the energy cost of charge separation .']
['In the last two decades mass spectrometry has given an impressive contribution to biochemistry , protein science , proteomics and structural biology .', "This technique offers powerful insights into protein structure and dynamics along with useful information on the role of solvent in protein stability as it is able to preserve non-covalent interactions and globular structures during the proteins' flight inside the mass spectrometer .", 'Unfortunately , the key issue of the charge state of ionizable groups , presumably different from that in solution , has not been elucidated yet .', 'So far conflicting assumptions and conclusions have been drawn by several groups .', 'In the present work a very accurate structural and energetic analysis of the protonation state of two peptides and a small protein in the gas phase was performed .', 'Results suggest that internal solvation can stabilize charge separation with the formation of zwitterionic states .']
['biophysics/protein chemistry and proteomics', 'biochemistry/protein chemistry', 'biophysics/theory and simulation']