- Oral presentation
- Open Access
Backbone flexibility controls the activity and specificity of a protein-protein interface – specificity in snake venom metalloproteases (SVMPs)
https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2946-3-S1-O22
© Wallnoefer et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011
- Published: 19 April 2011
Keywords
- Basement Membrane
- Significant Alteration
- Surface Region
- Damage Function
- Potential Reaction
Protein-Protein interfaces have crucial functions in many biological processes [1]. The large interaction areas of such interfaces show complex interaction motifs. Even more challenging is the understanding of (multi-)specificity in protein-protein binding. Many proteins can bind several partners to mediate their function [2].
A perfect paradigm to study such multi-specific protein-protein interfaces are snake venom metalloproteases (SVMPs) [3]. Inherently, they bind to a variety of basement membrane proteins of capillaries, hydrolyze them, and induce profuse bleeding. However, despite having a high sequence homology, some SVMPs show a strong hemorrhagic activity, while others are (almost) inactive [4].
Our results indicate that the activity to induce hemorrhage, and thus the capability to bind the potential reaction partners, is related to the backbone flexibility in a certain surface region[4]. A subtle interplay between flexibility and rigidity of two loops seems to be the prerequisite for the proteins to carry out their damaging function. Presumably, a significant alteration in the backbone dynamics makes the difference between SVMPs that induce hemorrhage and the inactive ones.
Authors’ Affiliations
References
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This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
