An Atomistic View to the Gas Phase Proteome

Extended all-atom molecular dynamics simulations on all protein metafolds have been performed to obtain a complete picture of the gas phase proteome. The structural atlas of the gas phase proteome obtained here shows an unexpected maintenance of the global and local structure and of the general deformability pattern upon transfer to the gas phase under electrospray conditions. Despite a general compression, the solution structure can be easily very well recognized from the gas phase one, and most structural details, such as secondary structure, are well preserved upon vaporization. Rehydration of the gas phase protein leads in most cases to a very fast transition from gas phase to solution structure. Overall, our massive analysis (over 4 mu s in solution and over 12 mu s in the gas phase) demonstrates that solution-like structures can be determined by using mass spectroscopy and related techniques to obtain fast approximations to the solution structure.