Title: Effects of Increased Loop Flexibility on the Structure and Stability of a De Novo Designed Helical Protein.
Volume: 8
Issue: 2
Author(s): Brigtte Simons, Dean Scholl, Terry Cyr and Mary Alice Hefford
Affiliation:
Keywords:
de novo protein, mb-1, mb-16
Abstract: MB-1 is a de novo protein designed to incorporate amino acids required for dairy cow nutrition while folding into a four-helix-bundle. Analysis shows that, as per design, MB-1 is a largely helical protein but appears to be dimeric and shows less stability than expected. Recent evidence indicates that the loop regions in MB-1 may have been under-designed. The variant, MB-16, described here attempts to correct potentially detrimental effects on turn formation by introducing a flexible, five-glycine residues sequence as the second loop.