摘要
Recently, a detailed nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) study was performed on the fate of exposed/surface charge pairs ina protein on transferring it from a test tube to cytoplasmic soup [10], in which the authors directly measured the proteinelectrostatic interactions and elucidated the influencing factors in cells (https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c10154).Protein electrostatic interactions are a kind of non-covalent interactions between charged amino acid residues [1e4]. Inorganisms, electrostatic interactions play vital roles in many important biological processes, such as enzyme catalysis,protein protein interactions, and protein DNA/RNA interactions. Studies of electrostatic interactions of proteins wereconventionally carried out in buffers rather than in cells. However, the influence of the high macromolecular concentration(up to 450 g/L) [5] in cells on protein folding, stability, and interactions is nonnegligible [6e9]. Accurate measurement andanalysis of electrostatic interactions under the influence of cellular environments are highly desired to understand thephysiochemistry and functions of proteins in cells.
