The peptides Asp-Ala-His-Lys (DAHK) and Gly-His-Lys (GHK) are naturally occurring copper(II)-chelating motives in human serum and cerebrospinal fluid. Here the sensitive thermodynamic technique isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) has been used to study the energetics of copper(II) binding to DAHK and GHK peptides in the presence of the weaker ligand glycine as a competitor. DAHK and GHK bind Cu(II) predominantly in a 1:1 stoichiometry with conditional dissociation constants (i.e. at pH 7.4, in the absence of the competing chelators glycine and HEPES buffer) of 2.6 +/- 0.4 x 10-14 M and of 7.0 +/- 1.0 x 10-14 M, respectively. Furthermore, the apparent ΔH values were measured and the number of protons released upon Cu(II) binding was determined by performing experiments in different buffers. This allowed us to determine the conditional ΔG, ΔH, and ΔS, i.e. corrected for the contributions of the weaker ligand glycine and the buffer at pH 7.4. We found that the entropic and enthalpic contributions to the Cu(II)-binding to GHK and DAHK are distinct, with a higher enthalpic contribution for GHK. The obtained thermodynamic parameters correspond well to those in the literature obtained by other techniques, suggesting that the use of the weaker ligand glycine as a competitor in ITC provides accurate data for Cu(II)-binding to high affinity peptides, which cannot be accurately determined without the use of a competitor ligand
