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Protein before and after folding Results of protein folding. Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein, after synthesis by a ribosome as a linear chain of amino acids, changes from an unstable random coil into a more ordered three-dimensional structure.
A protein structure database is a database that is modeled around the various experimentally determined protein structures. The aim of most protein structure databases is to organize and annotate the protein structures, providing the biological community access to the experimental data in a useful way.
α/β proteins are a class of structural domains in which the secondary structure is composed of alternating α-helices and β-strands along the backbone. The β-strands are therefore mostly parallel. [4] Common examples include the flavodoxin fold, the TIM barrel and leucine-rich-repeat (LRR) proteins such as ribonuclease inhibitor.
Advances in experimental and theoretical studies have shown that folding can be viewed in terms of energy landscapes, [54] [55] where folding kinetics is considered as a progressive organisation of an ensemble of partially folded structures through which a protein passes on its way to the folded structure.
This secondary structure then folds to produce the tertiary structure of the protein. The tertiary structure is the proteins overall 3D structure which is made of different secondary structures folding together. In the tertiary structure, key protein features e.g. the active site, are folded and formed enabling the protein to function.
[3] [4] The postulate amounts to saying that, at the environmental conditions (temperature, solvent concentration and composition, etc.) at which folding occurs, the native structure is a unique, stable and kinetically accessible minimum of the free energy. In other words, there are three conditions for formation of a unique protein structure:
It consists of three antiparallel strands connected by hairpins, while the fourth is adjacent to the first and linked to the third by a longer loop. This type of structure forms easily during the protein folding process. [4] [5] It was named after a pattern common to Greek ornamental artwork (see meander).
Other examples of four-helix bundles include cytochrome, ferritin, human growth hormone, cytokine, [5] and Lac repressor C-terminal. The four-helix bundle fold has proven an attractive target for de novo protein design, with numerous de novo four-helix bundle proteins having been successfully designed by rational [6] and by combinatorial [7 ...