Direct Measurement of Nucleation and Growth Rates in Lysozyme Folding

A kinetic folding intermediate of hen lysozyme is shown to form in a nucleation/growth type of mechanism. Under native solvent conditions, a nucleated state is formed slowly during refolding (tau = 14 +/- 1 ms at 0 M GdmCl) and is rapidly converted to the folding intermediate (tau = 300 +/- 150 micros at 0 M GdmCl). Under these conditions the nucleated state represents a high-energy state compared to the folding intermediate (delta deltaG0 =...