A/p-barrel proteins

Lesk, A.M., Branden, C.-L, Chothia, C. Structural principles of a/p barrel proteins the packing of the interior of the sheet. Proteins 5 139-148, 1989. 

Fersht, A. and Altamirano, M. (2001) Design of novel enzymes by mutagenesis of a/p-barrel proteins. PCT Int. Appl. 83, pp. 

The goal of any statistical analysis is inference concerning whether on the basis of available data, some hypothesis about the natural world is true. The hypothesis may consist of the value of some parameter or parameters, such as a physical constant or the exact proportion of an allelic variant in a human population, or the hypothesis may be a qualitative statement, such as This protein adopts an a/p barrel fold or I am currently in Philadelphia. The parameters or hypothesis can be unobservable or as yet unobserved. How the data arise from the parameters is called the model for the system under study and may include estimates of experimental error as well as our best understanding of the physical process of the system. 

The eight-stranded a/p-barrel stmcture is one of the largest and most regular of all domain stmctures. A minimum of about 200 residues are required to form this structure. It has been found in many different proteins, most of which are enzymes, with completely different amino acid sequences and... 

All known eight-stranded a/p-barrel domains have enzymatic functions that include isomerization of small sugar molecules, oxidation by flavin coenzymes, phosphate transfer, and degradation of sugar polymers. In some of these enzymes the barrel domain comprises the whole subunit of the protein in others the polypeptide chain is longer and forms several additional domains. An enzymatic function in these multidomain subunits, however, is always associated with the barrel domain. 

We have described a general relationship between structure and function for the a/p-barrel structures. They all have the active site at the same position with respect to their common structure in spite of having different functions as well as different amino acid sequences. We can now ask if similar relationships also occur for the open a/p-sheet structures in spite of their much greater variation in structure. Can the position of the active sites be predicted from the structures of many open-sheet a/p proteins ... 

The a/p-barrel structure is one of the largest and most regular of all domain structures, comprising about 250 amino acids. It has so far been found in more than 20 different proteins, with completely different amino acid sequences and different functions. They are all enzymes that are modeled on this common scaffold of eight parallel p strands surrounded by eight a helices. They all have their active sites in very similar positions, at the bottom of a funnel-shaped pocket created by the loops that connect the carboxy end of the p strands with the amino end of the a helices. The specific enzymatic activity is, in each case, determined by the lengths and amino acid sequences of these loop regions which do not contribute to the stability of the fold. 

Easters, I., Wodak, S.J., Pio, F. The design of idealized a/p-barrels analysis of p-sheet closure requirements. Proteins 7 249-256, 1990. 

Type i and ii membrane proteins only contain one transmembrane helix of this type, while type ill proteins contain several. Rarely, type i and ii polypeptides can aggregate to form a type iV transmembrane protein. Several groups of integral membrane proteins—e.g., the porins (see p. 212)—penetrate the membrane with antiparallel (3-sheet structures. Due to its shape, this tertiary structure is known as a P-barrel. ... 

A biochemical curiosity is the presence in egg white of the glycoprotein avidin.ab Each 68-kDa subunit of this tetrameric protein binds one molecule of biotin tenaciously with Kf 1015 M 1. Nature s purpose in placing this unusual protein in egg white is uncertain. Perhaps it is a storage form of biotin, but it is more likely an antibiotic that depletes the environment of biotin. A closely similar protein streptavidin is secreted into the culture medium by Streptomyces avidinii.c Its sequence is homologous to that of avidin. It has a similar binding constant for biotin and the two proteins have similar three-dimensional structures.3/d i Biotin binds at one end of a P barrel formed from antiparallel strands and is held by multiple hydrogen bonds and a conformational alteration that allows a peptide loop to close over the bound vitamin. 

The overall three-dimensional structure of a protein is called the tertiary structure. The tertiary structure represents the spatial packing of secondary structures (Ofran and Rost, 2005). As for secondary structures, there are several different classes of tertiary structures. More advanced classification schemes take into account common topologies, motifs, or folds (Wishart, 2005). Common tertiary folds include the a/p-barrel, the four-helix bundle, and the Greek key (we will discuss protein folding further in Chapter 14). Any change to any part of the structure of a protein will have an impact on its biological activity (Thomas, 2003). 

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