Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2000

The present knowledge on the stereochemical mechanism of action of glucose (or xylose) isomerase, one of the highest tonnage industrial enzymes, is summarized. First we deal shortly with experimental methods applied to study the structure and function of this enzyme enzyme kinetics, protein engineering, X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic and electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. Computation Read More

Advances in molecular biology may mean that almost any protein sequence can be synthesised, but perhaps this has served to highlight the inadequacy of theoretical work. For a given protein fold, it is probably not possible to reliably predict an ideal sequence. We identify and survey several aspects of the problem. Firstly, it is not clear what is the best way to score a sequence-structure pair. Secondly, there is no cons Read More

Efforts to use computers in predicting the secondary structure of proteins based only on primary structure information started over a quarter century ago (1-3). Although the results were encouraging initially, the accuracy of the pioneering methods generally did not attain the level required for using predictions of secondary structures reliably in modelling the three-dimensional topology of proteins. During the last d Read More

Because synthetic short peptides bearing critical binding residues, can chemically mimic the folded antigenic determinants on proteins, short synthetic peptides can generate antibodies that react with cognate sequences in intact folded proteins. According to this mimotope theory, we produced site-specific antibodies by immunization with short peptides which overlapped each other and covered the entire protein, and Read More

Protein folding and assembly in the cell requires the assistance of molecular chaperones. These components prevent off pathway folding reactions that lead to aggregation. They are also critical factors in organismal stress physiology, protecting cells against heat shock and providing thermotolerance. Among this important protein family are chaperonins. They form large cylindrical double ring complexes with a centra Read More