Long-distance conformational changes in a protein engineered by modulated sequence duplication.

Sagermann, Martin; Gay, Leslie; Matthews, Brian W · Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · 2003

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

There are few, if any, known instances in which a biological signal is transmitted via a large conformational change through the body of a protein. We describe here a mutant of T4 lysozyme that was engineered to permit structural change at a distance. The design uses a tandem sequence repeat that makes it possible to transmit large-scale structural changes from one end of an alpha-helix to the other over a distance of 17-25 A. The method should be of general applicability and may make it possible to introduce a mutation at one site in a protein that will induce large-scale changes in the structure at a spatially remote site.

Medical subject headings