Published in Proteins
The PIEZO channels, a family of mechanosensitive channels in vertebrates, feature a fast activation by mechanical stimuli (eg, membrane tension) followed by a slower inactivation. Although a medium-resolution structure of the trimeric form of PIEZO1 was solved by cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), key structural changes responsible for the channel...
Published in Proteins
Periplasmic heme-binding proteins (PBPs) in Gram-negative bacteria are components of the heme acquisition system. These proteins shuttle heme across the periplasmic space from outer membrane receptors to ATP-binding cassette (ABC) heme importers located in the inner-membrane. In the present study, we characterized the structures of PBPs found in th...
Published in Proteins
Understanding the origin of the catalytic power of enzymes has both conceptual and practical importance. One of the most important finding from computational studies of enzyme catalysis is that a major part of the catalytic power is due to the preorganization of the enzyme active site. Unfortunately, misunderstanding of the nontrivial preorganizati...
Published in Proteins
Protein phosphorylation is one of the most pervasive post-translational modifications and regulates diverse cellular processes in organisms. Under the catalysis of protein kinases, protein phosphorylation usually occurred in the residues serine (S), threonine (T), or tyrosine (Y). In this contribution, we proposed a novel scheme (named KMPhos) for ...
Published in Proteins
Non-nucleoside inhibitors of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 reverse transcriptase (RT), NNRTIs, which bind to the p66/p51 heterodimeric RT, also interact with the p66/p66 homodimer, whose structure is unknown. 19 F nuclear magnetic resonance of a single 4-trifluoromethylphenylalanine (tfmF) residue, incorporated into the NNRTI binding pocket o...
Published in Proteins
Xaa-Pro peptidases (XPP) are dinuclear peptidases of MEROPS M24B family that hydrolyze Xaa-Pro iminopeptide bond with a trans-proline at the second position of the peptide substrate. XPPs specific towards dipeptides are called prolidases while those that prefer longer oligopeptides are called aminopeptidases P. Though XPPs are strictly conserved in...
Published in Proteins
Among different ligand binding motifs, anion binding Cα NN motif consisting of peptide backbone atoms of three consecutive residues are observed to be important for recognition of free anions, like sulphate or biphosphate and participate in different key functions. Here we study the interaction of sulphate and biphosphate with Cα NN motif present i...
Published in Proteins
Elemental sulfur exists primarily as an S80 ring and serves as terminal electron acceptor for a variety of sulfur-fermenting bacteria. Hyperthermophilic archaea from black smoker vents are an exciting research tool to advance our knowledge of sulfur respiration under extreme conditions. Here, we use a hybrid method approach to demonstrate that the ...
Published in Proteins
In this work, we carry out a comparative study of the homo 360-mer structures of viral capsids and bacterial compartments. Different from viral 360-mers that all are arranged on a skewed right-handed icosahedral lattice with a triangulation number T of 7, the new 360-mer structure of AaLS-13, an engineered bacterial compartment, offers a novel open...
Published in Proteins
Common structural elements in proteins such as α-helices or β-sheets are characterized by uniformly repeating, energetically favorable main chain conformations which additionally exhibit a completely saturated hydrogen-bonding network of the main chain NH and CO groups. Although polyproline or polyglycine type II helices (PPII or PGII ) are frequen...
