Conformations of proteins

As a template for an intermediate conformation of protein kinase, the crystal structure of the binary complex of cAPK with adenosine (Ibkx.pdb in the Protein Data Bank) was used. As templates for open conformations... 

Conformational Adjustments The conformations of protein and ligand in the free state may differ from those in the complex. The conformation in the complex may be different from the most stable conformation in solution, and/or a broader range of conformations may be sampled in solution than in the complex. In the former case, the required adjustment raises the energy, in the latter it lowers the entropy in either case this effect favors the dissociated state (although exceptional instances in which the flexibility increases as a result of complex formation seem possible). With current models based on two-body potentials (but not with force fields based on polarizable atoms, currently under development), separate intra-molecular energies of protein and ligand in the complex are, in fact, definable. However, it is impossible to assign separate entropies to the two parts of the complex. 

LSD Caves, JD Evanseck, M Karplus. Locally accessible conformations of proteins Multiple molecular dynamics simulations of crambm. Protein Sci 7 649-666, 1998. 

This thiol-disulfide interconversion is a key part of numerous biological processes. WeTJ see in Chapter 26, for instance, that disulfide formation is involved in defining the structure and three-dimensional conformations of proteins, where disulfide "bridges" often form cross-links between q steine amino acid units in the protein chains. Disulfide formation is also involved in the process by which cells protect themselves from oxidative degradation. A cellular component called glutathione removes potentially harmful oxidants and is itself oxidized to glutathione disulfide in the process. Reduction back to the thiol requires the coenzyme flavin adenine dinucleotide (reduced), abbreviated FADH2. 

Bostrom, J. Reproducing the conformations of protein-bound ligands a critical evaluation of several popular conformational searching tools. /. Comput.-Aided Mol. Des. 2001, 35,1137-1152. 

Tanford (1968) reviewed early studies of protein denaturation and concluded that high concentrations of Gdm-HCl and, in some cases, urea are capable of unfolding proteins that lack disulfide cross-links to random coils. This conclusion was largely based on intrinsic viscosity data, but optical rotation and optical rotatory dispersion (ORD) [reviewed by Urnes and Doty (1961) ] were also cited as providing supporting evidence. By these same lines of evidence, heat- and acid-unfolded proteins were held to be less completely unfolded, with some residual secondary and tertiary structure. As noted in Section II, a polypeptide chain can behave hydrodynamically as random coil and yet possess local order. Similarly, the optical rotation and ORD criteria used for a random coil by Tanford and others are not capable of excluding local order in largely unfolded polypeptides and proteins. The ability to measure the ORD, and especially the CD spectra, of unfolded polypeptides and proteins in the far UV provides much more incisive information about the conformation of proteins, folded and unfolded. The CD spectra of many unfolded proteins have been reported, but there have been few systematic studies. 

The use of PIR compounds to study protein interactions is a significant advance over the use of standard homobifunctional crosslinkers. The unique design of the PIR reagent facilitates deconvolution of putative protein interaction complexes through a simplified mass spec analysis. The software can ignore all irrelevant peak data and just focus analysis on the two labeled peptide peaks, which accompany the reporter signal of appropriate mass. This greatly simplifies the bioinformatics of data analysis and provides definitive conformation of protein-protein crosslinks. 

A solution structure of French Bean plastocyanin has been reported by Wright and co-workers,19 using nuclear magnetic resonance techniques described in Section 3.5 of Chapter 3. The structure, determined from a plastocyanin molecule in solution rather than in a solid-state crystal, agrees well with that of reduced poplar plastocyanin X-ray crystallographic structure reported above. Conformations of protein side chains constituting the hydrophobic core of the French bean plastocyanin are well-defined by the NMR technique. Surface side chains show... 

In the structurally coupled QM/MM implementation of Zhang et al. [55, 56], in which the QM/MM boundary was treated by use of the pseudobond approach [55, 57], the QM/MM minimization of the QM part is combined with FEP calculations. In this procedure the energy profile of the enzyme reaction is first determined by use of QM/MM energy minimizations. The structures and charges of the QM atoms are then used, in the same manner as in the QM/FE method, to determine the role of environment on the energy profile of the reaction. In this way the effects of a large number of MM conformations of protein and solvent environment can be included in the total energies. 

Bostrom, J. Reproducing the conformations of protein-bound ligands ... 

Temperature and pH effects on hemopexin, its domains, and the respective heme complexes have also been examined using absorbance and CD spectroscopy, which reflect stability of the heme iron-bis-histidyl coordination of hemopexin and of the conformation of protein, rather than overall thermodynamic unfolding of the protein. Using these spectral methods to follow temperature effects on hemopexin stability yielded results generally comparable to the DSC findings, but also revealed interesting new features (Fig. 14) (N. Shipulina et al., unpublished). Melting experiments showed that apo-hemopexin loses tertiary... 

The native conformation of proteins is stabilized by a number of different interactions. Among these, only the disulfide bonds (B) represent covalent bonds. Hydrogen bonds, which can form inside secondary structures, as well as between more distant residues, are involved in all proteins (see p. 6). Many proteins are also stabilized by complex formation with metal ions (see pp. 76, 342, and 378, for example). The hydrophobic effect is particularly important for protein stability. In globular proteins, most hydrophobic amino acid residues are arranged in the interior of the structure in the native conformation, while the polar amino acids are mainly found on the surface (see pp. 28, 76). 

Information about the biologically active (native) conformation of proteins is already encoded in their amino acid sequences. The native forms of many proteins arise spontaneously in the test tube and within a few minutes. Nevertheless, there are special auxiliary proteins (chaperonines) that support the folding of other proteins in the conditions present within the cell (see p. 232). An important goal of biochemistry is to understand the laws governing protein folding. This would make it possible to predict the conformation of a protein from the easily accessible DNA sequence (see p. 260). 

Change in the native conformation of proteins or nucleic acids resulting in loss of their biological activity. 

FIGURE 10.3 A beta arrangement or pleated sheet conformation of proteins. 

Chene P (2008) Challenges in design of biochemical assays for the identification of small molecules to target multiple conformations of protein kinases. Drug Discov Today 13 522-529... 

Rigid model compounds (71NL457 83H817) of the type 146 and 147 were employed to study the effect of dipole interactions between C=0 groups on the conformation of proteins. The lactone C=0 group in 147 confers a marked preferential orientation of the N-acyl group, whereas in 146, two conformers are observed in nearly equal amounts, although the equilibrium is solvent dependent. 

Biochemists use the terms primary and secondary structure to designate configurations and conformations of proteins, respectively. 

Alton, G. R., Lunney, E. A. (2009) Targeting the unactivated conformations of protein kinases for small molecule drug discovery. Expert Opin Drug Discov 3, 595-605. 

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