Characteristics of hydration water around hen egg lysozyme as the protein model in aqueous solution. FTIR spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulation

In this paper, the hydration of a model protein – hen egg white lysozyme in aqueous solution has been presented. The leading method used was FTIR spectroscopy with an application of a technique of semi-heavy water (HDO) isotope dilution. Analysis of spectra of HDO isotopically diluted in water solution of lysozyme allowed us to isolate HDO spectra affected by lysozyme, and thus to characterise the energetic state of water molecules and their arrangement around protein molecules. The number of water molecules and the shape of the affected HDO spectrum were obtained using a classical and a chemometric method. This shape showed that the HDO spectrum affected by lysozyme may be presented as a superposition of two spectra corresponding to HDO affected by N-methylacetamide and the carboxylate anion (of the formic acid). Moreover, based on the difference in intermolecular distances distribution of water molecules (obtained from spectral data), we demonstrated that the lysozyme molecule causes a decrease in population of weak hydrogen bonds, and concurrently increases the probability of an occurrence of short hydrogen bonds in water affected by lysozyme. This conclusion was also confirmed by the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation.