Metamorphic proteins: the Janus proteins of structural biology.

ABSTRACT: The structural paradigm that the sequence of a protein encodes for a unique three-dimensional native fold does not acknowledge the intrinsic plasticity encapsulated in conformational free energy landscapes. Metamorphic proteins are a recently discovered class of biomolecules that illustrate this plasticity by folding into at least two distinct native state structures of comparable stability in the absence of ligands or cofactors to facilitate fold-switching. The expanding list of metamorphic proteins clearly shows that these proteins are not mere aberrations in protein evolution, but may have actually been a consequence of distinctive patterns in selection pressure such as those found in virus-host co-evolution. In this review, we describe the structure-function relationships observed in w

SUBMITTER: Madhurima K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8059507 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature