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AAT Bioquest

How does denaturation affect the 4 structure levels of a protein?

Posted June 22, 2020


Answer

Denaturation sabotages the quaternary structure by dissociate the protein subunits and/or disrupt the spatial arrangement of proteins subunits.

Tertiary structure denaturation involves the disruption of disulfide bridges and Van der Waal interactions between the side chains of amino acids.

In secondary structure denaturation, hydrogen bonds are disturbed. Proteins lose the regular repeating patterns such as α-helix and β-sheets, and adopt a random coil configuration.

Primary structure is held by covalent peptides, which are not disrupted by denaturation.

Additional resources

Amplite™ Fluorimetric Fluorescamine Protein Quantitation Kit *Blue Fluorescence*

Amplite™ Rapid Colorimetric Total Protein Thiol Quantitation Assay Kit

Branden, C. I., & Tooze, J. (2012). Introduction to protein structure. Garland Science.

Tanford, C. (1968). Protein denaturation. In Advances in protein chemistry (Vol. 23, pp. 121-282). Academic press.