The mechanism of the disulfide-bond forming enzyme
DsbA depends on the very low pKa of
a cysteine residue in its active-site and on the relative
instability of the oxidized enzyme compared to the reduced
one. A thermodynamic cycle has been used to correlate its
redox properties to the difference in the free energies
of folding (ΔΔGred/ox) of the
oxidized and reduced forms. However, the relation was proved
unsatisfied for a number of DsbA variants. In this study,
we investigate the thermodynamic and redox properties of
a highly destabilized variant DsbAP151A (substitution
of cis-Pro151 by an alanine) by the means of intrinsic
tryptophan fluorescence and by high-sensitivity differential
scanning calorimetry (HS-DSC). When the value of ΔΔGred/ox
obtained fluorimetrically for DsbAP151A does
not correlate with the value expected from its redox potential,
the value of ΔΔGred/ox provided
by HS-DSC are in perfect agreement with the predicted thermodynamic
cycle for both wild-type and variant. HS-DSC data indicate
that oxidized wild-type enzyme and the reduced forms of
both wild-type and variant unfold according to a two-state
mechanism. Oxidized DsbAP151A shows a deviation
from two-state behavior that implies the loss of interdomain
cooperativity in DsbA caused by Pro151 substitution. The
presence of chaotrope in fluorimetric measurements could
facilitate domain uncoupling so that the fluorescence probe
(Trp76) does not reflect the whole unfolding process of
DsbAP151A anymore. Thus, theoretical thermodynamic
cycle is respected when an appropriate method is applied
to DsbA unfolding under conditions in which protein domains
still conserve their cooperativity.