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Designer Proteins
Exploring the Structure
One goal of protein design is to create mini-proteins for use in biotechnology and medicine. Several groups have created mini-proteins by taking small, stable domains out of natural proteins and then redesigning the amino acids to stabilize the desired fold. Two examples are shown here. The basic fold of TC5b (PDB entry 1l2y) was taken from a protein found in Gila monsters, and then truncated and redesigned for better stability. It has a tryptophan at the very center (shown with a star) surrounded by prolines that together stabilize the structure. Pda8d (PDB entry 1psv) and FSD-1 (PDB entry 1fsd, not shown) take their folds from a zinc finger, and were redesigned so that zinc was no longer needed for folding. Notice that it has a cluster of carbon-rich amino acids at the center (shown with a star), and lots of charged amino acids decorating the surface.These pictures were created with RasMol. You can create similar pictures by clicking on the accession codes here and picking one of the options under View Structure.
For other designer proteins or "de novo" proteins, click here. For more information on designer proteins, click here.
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Last changed by: A.Honegger,