Protein Stability in TMAO and Mixed Urea–TMAO Solutions

Osmolytes are essential for cellular function under ubiquitous osmotic stress. Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is one such osmolyte that has gained remarkable attention due to its protein-protective ability against urea. This Review aims at providing a detailed account of recent theoretical and experimental developments in characterizing the structural changes and thermodynamic stability of proteins in the presence of TMAO and urea. New vapor pressure osmometry and molecular dynamics simulation results on urea–TMAO solutions are presented, and a unified molecular mechanism of TMAO counteraction of urea-induced protein denaturation is introduced. In addition, a detailed technical assessment of molecular dynamics force fields for TMAO and for urea–TMAO solutions is presented. The force field analysis highlights how many of the commonly used force field models are in fact incompatible with solvation thermodynamics and can lead to misleading conclusions. A new optimized force field for TMAO (Shea­(m)) is presented, and a recently optimized force field for TMAO–urea (Netz­(m)) that best reproduces experimental data is highlighted.