The allosteric transition of the chaperonin GroEL from Escherichia coli as studied by solution X-ray scattering

This is a short review article of our recent studies on the ATP-induced, allosteric conformational transition of the chaperonin GroEL complex by solution X-ray scattering. We used synchrotron X-ray scattering with a two-dimensional, charge-coupled, device-based X-ray detector to study (1) the specificity of the chaperonin GroEL for its ligand that induced the allosteric transition, and (2) the identification of the allosteric transition of GroEL in its complicated kinetics induced by ATP. Due to the dramatically increased sensitivity of the X-ray scattering technique based on the use of the two dimensional X-ray detector and synchrotron radiation, different allosteric conformational states of GroEL populated under different conditions were clearly distinguished from each other. It was concluded that solution X-ray scattering is an extremely powerful tool for investigating the equilibrium and kinetics of cooperative conformational transitions of oligomeric protein complex, especially when combined with other spectroscopic techniques such as fluorescence spectroscopy.