The stability of GCN4 leucine zipper and its four mutants in guanidine hydrochloride was detected to verify the contributions of different a position amino acid residues in polypeptide sequences to the forming and stability of parallel coiled coils. The changes of the circular dichroism spectra show that the displace- ment of the a position polar asparagine and the increase of asparagine in the GCN4 leucine zipper can reduce the α-helix content of the coiled coil structure. The mutants are less stable than the natural peptide in guanidine hydrochloride. The results show that the interaction between the polar asparagine contributes to the conformational stability of the coiled coil. Both the conformation and the number of polar residues in the coiled coil also affect the α-helix content and its resistance to the denaturant. The conclusions provide evidence describing the folding process of proteins including coiled coils in vivo.
