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Complexity Digest 2008.35 - 10
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28-Aug-2008

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Biophysics: Mob Rule, Nature
 









Excerpts: The crowding inherent within cells may affect not only protein
movement and folding, but also shape (...).
They focused on the VlsE protein, a proposed virulence factor in Borrelia
burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. VlsE is usually rugby-ball
shaped, but the team found that it adopts different equilibrium shapes in vitro
in the presence of varying levels of a polymeric 'crowding agent' that mimics
cytoplasmic macromolecules. When the native protein is loosened up by a
denaturing agent or by heat, two new structures - a 'bean' shape and a roughly
spherical conformation - intervene between the rugby ball and the denatured
protein as soon as the crowding agent is added.

If crowding can be 'tuned', it might be possible to expose different sites in
proteins and alter their behaviour.
Source: Biophysics: Mob Rule[
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7207/full/454921d.html ], DOI:
10.1038/454921d, Nature 454, 921, 08/08/21

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