Protein Knots
Posted on September 22, 2006 Comments (2)
Knotty problem puzzles protein researchers by Anne Trafton:
Of those that had knots, all were enzymes. Most had a simple three-crossing, or trefoil knot, a few had four crossings, and the most complicated, a five-crossing knot, was initially found in only one protein–ubiquitin hydrolase.
That complex knot may hold some protective value for ubiquitin hydrolase, whose function is to rescue other proteins from being destroyed–a dangerous job.
Photo: MIT researchers recently found that human ubiquitin hydrolase, shown here, has the most complicated knot ever observed in a protein. The simplified diagram, inset, shows the knot in the protein, which crosses itself five times. Larger image.
2 Responses to “Protein Knots”
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October 17th, 2007 @ 11:15 pm
“With the aid of more than 150,000 home computer users throughout the world, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have, for the first time, accurately predicted the three-dimensional structure of a small, naturally occurring globular protein using only its amino acid sequence…”
June 1st, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
“Thus even though -with some small exceptions – every cell in your body carries the same genome, the proteome can be wildly different between different tissues and can change rapidly over time…”