We have characterized the thermodynamic stability
of the SH3 domain from the Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Abp1p protein and found it to be relatively low compared
to most other SH3 domains, with a Tm
of 60 °C and a ΔGu of 3.08
kcal/mol. Analysis of a large alignment of SH3 domains led to the
identification of atypical residues at eight positions in the
wild-type Abp1p SH3 domain sequence that were subsequently replaced
by the residue seen most frequently at that position in the alignment.
Three of the eight mutants constructed in this way displayed increases
in Tm ranging from 8 to 15 °C with
concomitant increases in ΔGu of up to
1.4 kcal/mol. The effects of these substitutions on folding thermodynamics
and kinetics were entirely additive, and a mutant containing all three
was dramatically stabilized with a Tm
greater than 90 °C and a ΔGu
more than double that of the wild-type domain. The folding rate of
this hyperstable mutant was 10-fold faster than wild-type, while its
unfolding rate was fivefold slower. All of the stabilized mutants were
still able to bind a target peptide with wild-type affinity. We have
analyzed the stabilizing amino acid substitutions isolated in this
study and several other similar sequence alignment based studies. In
approximately 25% of cases, increased stability can be explained by
enhanced propensity of the substituted residue for the local backbone
conformation at the mutagenized site.