CHARLA IFLYSIB Viernes 06/03 · Wolfgang Paul · «Folding and dimerization of the parathyroid hormone: A stochastic approximation Monte Carlo study»

Título: Folding and dimerization of the parathyroid hormone: A stochastic approximation Monte Carlo study

Expositor: Wolfgang Paul – Institut of Physics, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, 06099 Halle, Germany.

Fecha: Viernes 06/03/2026 – 10:30 hs.

Resumen:

Basically all neurodegenerative disorders are connected with protein aggregation into fibril structures, so called amyloid fibrils. Today one knows that small aggregates of a few chains are the pathogenic structure and the fibril is something like a waste dump. Less well studied are situations, where the fibril is not a waste-dump (irreversible aggregation) but a functional storage device (reversible aggregation). This occurs for secretory proteins [1], one example for this being the fibril aggregation of calcitonin. Together with its antagonist, the parathyroid hormone, they regulate the calcium and phosphate content in the blood.
We studied the folding and dimerization of the parathyroid hormone using a mesoscopic resolution protein model and stochastic approximation Monte Carlo simulations. The latter allow for a numerically exact determination of the thermodynamics and equilibrium structure of such a protein model [2].
We find that folding and dimerization occur simultaneously and close to physiological temperature which explains the reversibility of this fibrillar aggregation.

References:

[1] S. K. Maji et al., Functional Amyloids as Natural Storage of Peptide Hormones in Pituitary Secretory Granules, Science 325, 328 (2009)
[2] C. Sommerfeld, W. Paul, Computational Study of the Dimerization of the Parathyroid Hormone, J. Phys. Chem B. 129, 12460 (2025).

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