Structural energetics of protein-carbohydrate interactions: Insights derived from the study of lysozyme binding to its natural saccharide inhibitors.

High-sensitivity isothermal titration calorimetry was used to characterize the binding of the glycohydrolitic enzyme hen egg-white lysozyme to its natural saccharide inhibitors, chitobiose and chitrotriose. Measurements were done at a pH of 4.7, in the 15 degrees C -45 degrees C temperature range. Using a structural-energetic parameterization derived previously for lectin-carbohydrate associations, both binding enthalpies and entropies for the present systems and for the complex of chitobiose with turkey egg-white lysozyme from the literature were correctly accounted for. These observations suggest that both lysozymes and lectins follow the same structural-energetic behavior in the binding to their ligands. From the analysis of lysozyme data in conjunction with other binding data reported in the literature, an ad hoc parameterization of DeltaCp for protein-carbohydrate complexes was derived for the first time. The novel parameters for both polar and apolar surface areas differed significantly from correlations obtained previously from model compounds and protein-folding data. As DeltaCp is extremely sensitive to changes in solvent structure, this finding indicates that protein-carbohydrate complexes have distinctive hydration properties. According to our analysis, the dehydration of polar groups is the major cause for the observed decrease in DeltaCp, which implies that these groups behave hydrophobically. The contribution of apolar surface areas was found of the expected sign, but their specific weight is much smaller than those obtained in other correlations. This small contribution to DeltaCp is consistent with Lemieux's hypothesis of a low degree of hydration of apolar surfaces on carbohydrates.