Protein folding determination

Zheng D, Fluang YJ, Moseley FINB, Xiao R, Aramini J, Swapna GVT, Montelione GT (2003) Automated protein fold determination using a minimal NMR constraint strategy. Protein Sci 12 1232-1246... 

Bashford, D., Chothia, C., Lesk, A.M. Determinants of a protein fold. Unique features of the globin amino acid sequences. /. Mol. Biol. 196 199-216, 1987. 

It can be inferred from the first section of this chapter that many different forces work together in a delicate balance to determine the overall three-dimensional structure of a protein. These forces operate both within the protein structure itself and between the protein and the water solvent. How, then, does nature dictate the manner of protein folding to generate the three-dimensional... 

In order to make as much data on the structure and its determination available in the databases, approaches for automated data harvesting are being developed. Structure classification schemes, as implemented for example in the SCOP, CATH, andFSSP databases, elucidate the relationship between protein folds and function and shed light on the evolution of protein domains. 

Because protein ROA spectra contain bands characteristic of loops and turns in addition to bands characteristic of secondary structure, they should provide information on the overall three-dimensional solution structure. We are developing a pattern recognition program, based on principal component analysis (PCA), to identify protein folds from ROA spectral band patterns (Blanch etal., 2002b). The method is similar to one developed for the determination of the structure of proteins from VCD (Pancoska etal., 1991) and UVCD (Venyaminov and Yang, 1996) spectra, but is expected to provide enhanced discrimination between different structural types since protein ROA spectra contain many more structure-sensitive bands than do either VCD or UVCD. From the ROA spectral data, the PCA program calculates a set of subspectra that serve as basis functions, the algebraic combination of which with appropriate expansion coefficients can be used to reconstruct any member of the... 

The molecular replacement method assumes similarity of the unknown structure to a known one. This is the most rapid method but requires the availability of a homologous protein s structure. The method relies on the observation that proteins which are similar in their amino acid sequence (homologous) will have very similar folding of their polypeptide chains. This method also relies on the use of Patterson functions. As the number of protein structure determinations increases rapidly, the molecular replacement method becomes extremely useful for determining protein phase angles. 

NOESY NMR spectroscopy is a homonuclear two-dimensional experiment that identifies proton nuclei that are close to each other in space. If one has already identified proton resonances in one-dimensional NMR spectroscopy or by other methods, it is then possible to determine three dimensional structure through NOESY. For instance, it is possible to determine how large molecules such as proteins fold themselves in three-dimensional space using the NOESY technique. The solution structures thus determined can be compared with solid-state information on the same protein obtained from X-ray crystallographic studies. The pulse sequence for a simple NOESY experiment is shown in Figure 3.23 as adapted from Figure 8.12 of reference 19. 

The term "structural genomics" is used to describe how the primary sequence of amino acids in a protein relates to the function of that protein. Currently, the core of structural genomics is protein structure determination, primarily by X-ray crystallography, and the design of computer programs to predict protein fold structures for new proteins based on their amino acid sequences and structural principles derived from those proteins whose 3-dimensional structures have been determined. Plant natural product pathways are a unique source of information for the structural biologist in view of the almost endless catalytic diversity encountered in the various pathway enzymes, but based on a finite number of reaction types. Plants are combinatorial chemists par excellence, and understanding the principles that relate enzyme structure to function will open up unlimited possibilities for the... 

A third approach that uses rules for assignments similar to the ones used by an expert to generate an initial protein fold has been implemented in the program AutoStructure, and applied to protein structure determination [6, 93]. 

---