To be disordered or not to be disordered: is that still a question for proteins in the cell? |
| |
Authors: | Kris Pauwels Pierre Lebrun Peter Tompa |
| |
Institution: | 1.VIB-VUB Center for Structural Biology (CSB),Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB),Brussels,Belgium;2.Structural Biology Brussels (SBB),Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB),Brussels,Belgium;3.Institute of Enzymology,Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences,Budapest,Hungary |
| |
Abstract: | There is ample evidence that many proteins or regions of proteins lack a well-defined folded structure under native-like conditions. These are called intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) or intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs). Whether this intrinsic disorder is also their main structural characteristic in living cells has been a matter of intense debate. The structural analysis of IDPs became an important challenge also because of their involvement in a plethora of human diseases, which made IDPs attractive targets for therapeutic development. Therefore, biophysical approaches are increasingly being employed to probe the structural and dynamical state of proteins, not only in isolation in a test tube, but also in a complex biological environment and even within intact cells. Here, we survey direct and indirect evidence that structural disorder is in fact the physiological state of many proteins in the proteome. The paradigmatic case of α-synuclein is used to illustrate the controversial nature of this topic. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|