Most biochemical reactions have evolved in crowded intracellular environments. However, the complexity of intracellular environments is often neglected in structural or functional studies of proteins. In these cases, reactions involving proteins are deliberately separated from the perturbations of co-solutes in order to simplify data acquisition and interpretation. Having acquired an enormous body of knowledge under these simplified dilute-buffer conditions, methodological progress of the past two decades has made the study of proteins inside living cells increasingly accessible and concomitantly kindled an interest to investigate proteins in their native habitat. Naturally, major questions that arose were to what extent ubiquitous transient interactions alter protein structure, function and thermodynamics and, not least, what role protein surfaces and their physicochemical properties play in determining the frequency and duration of these diffusive encounters.

By looking at the rotational-tumbling rates of three structurally well-characterized proteins in live cells with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation, we expand on previous research performed in the bacterium Escherichia coli and establish the physicochemical principles that determine diffusive interactions in the mammalian cytosol of the human ovarian cancer cell line A2780. Just as in E. coli, net charge is the dominating factor in regulating protein interactivity, albeit with the impact on rotational retardation greatly diminished. We ascribe this to the generally lower macromolecular concentrations in the eukaryotic cytosol, and put forward a hypothesis in which less stringent rules regarding protein surface decoration in eukaryotes could have facilitated the development of multi-cellular organisms. Furthermore, by developing a model where a distribution of differently sized interaction partners is taken into account when examining rotational retardation, we reconcile transverse and longitudinal in-cell relaxation with theory, and are able to estimate the populations of the bound and free form of a set of reporter proteins. Looking at the populations of bound protein instead of a mean-field rotational retardation finally allows us to re-assess the guiding rules behind diffusive cytosolic interactions. Last, we outline a putative mechanism behind the in-cell destabilization of a variant of Superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1^barrel). By mimicking generic poly-anionic intracellular co-solutes with poly-acetic acid (NaPAc1200), we identify the positively charged N-terminal portion of the unfolded form of the protein as the interaction site with the highest affinity. Further examining the unfolded ensemble of SOD1^barrel with a mutationally destabilized variant reveals a compact state, that remains almost unchanged upon binding to NaPAc1200. This suggests that NaPAc1200-mediated destabilization occurs mainly through mass action, in full accord with the postulated mechanism for in-cell protein destabilization.

Biophysical chemistry deals with the structural behavior, properties and molecular function of biological macromolecules. A long-standing challenge is here to establish how these macromolecular features change upon transfer from simplified conditions in vitro to the crowded and molecularly complex environment of live cells.  

This thesis focuses on establishing a general overview of the structural behavior and interaction properties of the ALS-associated protein superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1) in its natural cellular environment. Importantly, SOD1 constitutes also a multifaceted model system for the yet poorly understood mechanism of protein-aggregation disease, since it is readily amenable to protein-engineering analysis. The focus is on (i) SOD1 folding, (ii) the modulation of the SOD1 properties induced by intracellular interactions and (iii) the process of SOD1 fibrillation, all of which central to the understanding of the ALS disease mechanism. First, we investigate the biophysical role of the disordered catalytic loops in the apoSOD1 monomer, what is identified as the primary aggregation precursor. The results show that these loops play a pivotal role in modulation the apoSOD1 stability due to the generic Flory-entropy penalty, shedding new light to why this species is biased to be aggregation prone. Second, we target the diffusive interactions between SOD1 and the crowded intracellular environment by in-cell NMR. Our findings are that both the rotational tumbling and in-cell stability are controlled by basic physicochemical rules relating to the SOD1 surface properties. Finally, we analyze the kinetics of the SOD1-aggregation behavior in vitro. The observations confirm that the disordered SOD1 loops indeed accelerate the aggregation process because of their penalty to the apo state stability and show, additionally, that they influence the fibril stability.

The physicochemical cues exposed by this thesis work provide not only fundamental clues to our understanding of protein properties, but shed also new light on disease-promoting properties ALS-associated protein SOD1.