First artificial protein
RESEARCHERS HAVE designed and constructed a novel functional 93-amino acid protein structure called Top7. The achievement should enable researchers to explore larger questions about how proteins evolved and why a certain protein folds over others.
This opens the way for researchers to engineer enzymes for use as medicines or industrial catalysts, said the lead author, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator David Baker at the University of Washington.
Baker and colleagues Brian Kuhlman, at the University of North Carolina published their studies in Science. Proteins are initially synthesised as long chains of amino acids and they cannot function properly until they fold into intricate globular structures. According to Baker, designing a specified protein fold has important implications for the future. "Probably the most important lesson is that we can now design completely new proteins that are very stable and are very close in structure to what we were aiming for," he said.
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