Ligand engineering

Li Y, Tao P, Viswanath A, Benicewicz BC, Schadler LS (2012) Bimodal surface ligand engineering the key to tunable nanocomposites. Langmuir 29(4) 1211-1220... 

Van Aalten, D.M.F., Findlay, J.B.C., Amadei, A., Berendsen,H.J.C. Essential dynamics of the cellular retinol-binding protein. Evidence for ligand-induced conformational changes. Protein Engin. 8 (1995) 1129-1136. 

The subtilisin mutants described here illustrate the power of protein engineering as a tool to allow us to identify the specific roles of side chains in the catalytic mechanisms of enzymes. In Chapter 17 we shall discuss the utility of protein engineering in other contexts, such as design of novel proteins and the elucidation of the energetics of ligand binding to proteins. 

The extended ternary complex model can take into account the phenomenon of constitutive receptor activity. In genetically engineered systems where receptors can be expressed in high density, Costa and Herz [2] noted that high levels of receptor expression uncovered the existence of a population of spontaneously active receptors and that these receptors produce an elevated basal response in the system. The relevant factor is the ratio of receptors and G-proteins (i.e., elevated levels of receptor cannot yield constitutive activity in the absence of adequate amounts of G-protein, and vice versa). Constitutive activity (due to the [RaG] species) in the absence of ligand ([A] = 0) is expressed as... 

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