Structure-function studies on protein homodimers

蛋白质同型二聚体的结构功能研究

• 批准号: 216849-2008
• 负责人: Rafferty, Steven
• 金额: $ 2.55万
• 依托单位: Trent University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2012-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=498112
• 关键词: Structure; function; studies; protein; homodimers

Many proteins function in pairs: two identical protein chains associate with each other to make a functional unit. In a sense, they are like a set of identical twins that work together. One way of investigating how proteins work is by introducing changes into them by site-directed mutagenesis, which allows a scientist to specify how the protein is changed, and then to study how those changes affect the function of the protein. When applied to proteins with two identical chains, both chains will be altered. It would be interesting to study such proteins in which only one chain is altered, to see how this affects the functional unit. Think of the twins again, and imagine that they are both right handed (after all, they are identical!). Site directed mutagenesis would allow you to change their handedness, so they are both left handed. How would this change affect how they work? What if you could change the handedness of just one of the twins, so that you could see how the pair works when one is left handed and the other is right-handed? This is what our laboratory does: we prepare dimer pairs that are no longer identical, and study the properties of the pair. As close to half of all known proteins consist of such pairs, our work is of general value, even though we restrict ourselves to just a handful of proteins.

许多蛋白质成对发挥作用：两条相同的蛋白质链相互结合形成一个功能单元。 从某种意义上说，它们就像一对一起工作的同卵双胞胎。 研究蛋白质如何发挥作用的一种方法是通过定点诱变将变化引入蛋白质中，这使得科学家能够明确蛋白质如何变化，然后研究这些变化如何影响蛋白质的功能。 当应用于具有两条相同链的蛋白质时，两条链都会被改变。研究仅一条链发生改变的蛋白质，看看这如何影响功能单元，将会很有趣。再想想这对双胞胎，想象他们都是右利手（毕竟，他们是相同的！）。定点突变可以让你改变他们的惯用手，所以他们都是左撇子。这一变化将如何影响他们的工作方式？ 如果你可以只改变双胞胎中的一个的惯用手，这样你就可以看到当一个是左撇子而另一个是右撇子时，这对双胞胎是如何工作的呢？这就是我们实验室所做的：我们制备不再相同的二聚体对，并研究该对的特性。 由于接近一半的已知蛋白质由此类对组成，因此我们的工作具有普遍价值，尽管我们仅限于少数蛋白质。