Random coil, protein structure

A protein will generally have one or more random coil regions in its overall structure Random coils, as the name suggests, do not have a regular, folded structure and undergo... 

Fig. 1). However, there also occur regions in proteins involving random-coil segments (e.g., some proteins have essentially no identifiable secondary structure) that require a more complex description. In such cases it may not be possible to do more than simply give a list of the mainchain dihedral angles (< ,-, l/j for all residues i).

Figure 1.29 Alternative cartoon depictions of proteins, (a) surface display structure of small metal rich protein cytochrome c (horse heart) (pdb Ihrc) showing Van der Waal s surface coloured for positive charge (blue) and for negative charge (red). Ball and stick representations of iron-porphyrin macrocycle (prosthetic group) are shown (red) for each subunit with central iron ion rendered as Van der Waals sphere (light blue) (b) CPK structure of cytochrome c in which all polypeptide atoms are rendered as Van der Waals spheres (purple). Porphryin and iron ion are shown as in Fig. 1.28 (c) schematic display structure (top view) of parallel a/p-protein triose phosphate isomerase (chicken muscle) (pdb Itim) with a-helix shown as cylinders (red), 8-strands as arrowed ribbons (light blue), loop structures (random coil) as rods (light grey) (d) schematic display structure (side view) of triose phosphate isomerase, otherwise as for (c).

Equation (8.97) shows that the second virial coefficient is a measure of the excluded volume of the solute according to the model we have considered. From the assumption that solute molecules come into surface contact in defining the excluded volume, it is apparent that this concept is easier to apply to, say, compact protein molecules in which hydrogen bonding and disulfide bridges maintain the tertiary structure (see Sec. 1.4) than to random coils. We shall return to the latter presently, but for now let us consider the application of Eq. (8.97) to a globular protein. This is the objective of the following example. 

Proteins fold on a time scale from [is to s. Starting from a random coil conformation, proteins can find their stable fold quickly although the number of possible conformations is astronomically high. The protein folding problem is to predict the folding and the final structure of a protein solely from its sequence. 

The availability of the purified transporter in large quantity has enabled investigation of its secondary structure by biophysical techniques. Comparison of the circular dichroism (CD) spectrum of the transporter in lipid vesicles with the CD spectra of water-soluble proteins of known structure indicated the presence of approximately 82% a-helix, 10% ) -turns and 8% other random coil structure [97]. No / -sheet structure was detected either in this study or in a study of the protein by the same group using polarized Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy [98]. In our laboratory FTIR spectroscopy of the transporter has similarly revealed that... 

Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis results suggest that p-LG undergoes a greater conformational loss as a fimction of extrusion temperature than a-LA, presumably due to intermolecular disulfide bond formation. Atomic force microscopy indicates that texturization results in a loss of secondary structure of aroimd 15%, total loss of globular structure at 78 °C, and conversion to a random coil at 100 °C (Qi and Onwulata, 2011). Moisture has a small effect on whey protein texturization, whereas temperature has the largest effect. Extrusion at or above 75 °C leads to a uniform densely packed polymeric product with no secondary structural elements (mostly a-helix) remaining (Qi and Onwulata, 2011). 

Proteins either strengthen the membrane structure (building proteins) or fulfil various transport or catalytic functions (functional proteins). They are often only electrostatically bound to the membrane surface (extrinsic proteins) or are covalently bound to the lipoprotein complexes (intrinsic or integral proteins). They are usually present in the form of an or-helix or random coil. Some integral proteins penetrate through the membrane (see Section 6.4.2). 

For instance, one would like to know the types of structures actually present in the native and denatured proteins.. .. The denatured protein in a good solvent such as urea is probably somewhat like a randomly coiled polymer, though the large optical rotation of denatured proteins in urea indicates that much local rigidity must be present in the chain (pg. 4). 

First, proteins refold from the denatured state, not from the hypothetical random coil state. It is the starting point of all refolding reactions, whether in a cell or in a test tube. To understand any chemical reaction, structural features of the reactant and the product must be compared to quantify the changes that occur, for these changes define the reaction. 

To obtain statistically significant comparisons of ordered and disordered sequences, much larger datasets were needed. To this end, disordered regions of proteins or wholly disordered proteins were identified by literature searches to find examples with structural characterizations that employed one or more of the following methods (1) X-ray crystallography, where absence of coordinates indicates a region of disorder (2) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), where several different features of the NMR spectra have been used to identify disorder and (3) circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, where whole-protein disorder is identified by a random coil-type CD spectrum. 

To further our understanding of the behavior of unfolded proteins, it is necessary to employ experimental techniques able to discriminate between the dynamic true random coil state and more static types of disorder, including situations in which some ordered secondary structure may also be present. One such technique is a novel chiroptical... 

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