The Functional Significance of High Cysteine Content in Eye Lens γ-Crystallins.

ABSTRACT: Cataract disease is strongly associated with progressively accumulating oxidative damage to the extremely long-lived crystallin proteins of the lens. Cysteine oxidation affects crystallin folding, interactions, and light-scattering aggregation especially strongly due to the formation of disulfide bridges. Minimizing crystallin aggregation is crucial for lifelong lens transparency, so one might expect the ubiquitous lens crystallin superfamilies (α and βγ) to contain little cysteine. Yet, the Cys content of γ-crystallins is well above the average for human proteins. We review literature relevant to this longstanding puzzle and take advantage of expanding genomic databases and improved machine learning tools for protein structure prediction to investigate it further. We observe remarkably lo

SUBMITTER: Serebryany E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11118217 | biostudies-literature | 2024 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature