Ionic strength and intermolecular contacts in protein crystals

Abstract

The ionic strengths of crystallization solutions for 206 proteins were observed to form a bimodal distribution. The data was divided into two sets at an ionic strength of 4.4 M, and knowledge-based potentials were calculated to determine contact preferences at intermolecular crystal interfaces. Consistent with previous observations over all ionic strengths, intermolecular crystal contacts tend to exclude nonpolar amino acids; lysine is the least favored polar amino acid at crystal contacts; and arginine and glutamine are the two most favored amino acid at crystal contacts. However, some aspects of intermolecular contact preferences within protein crystals are significantly dependent on ionic strength. Arginine is the most favored residue at low ionic strength, but it takes second place to glutamine at high ionic strength. Other major ionic strength-dependent differences in protein crystal contacts can be explained by the binding of cations or anions. While others have shown the importance of ion binding experimentally in selected protein crystals, these statistical results indicate that intermolecular interface formation must involve ion-mediated contacts in a large number of protein crystals.