Stabilization of λ repressor against thermal denaturation by site‐directed Gly→Ala changes in α‐helix 3

Abstract

Oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis has been used to replace α-helical glycines in the N-terminal domain of λ repressor with alanines. Since alanine is a significantly better helix-forming residue than glycine, these changes were predicted to have a stabilizing effect. We show that the Gly46→Ala substitution, the Gly48→Ala substitution, and the double substitution increase the melting temperature of the N-terminal domain by 3–6°.