Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sekhar, Ashok
• Kay, Lewis E.

Titel

NMR paves the way for atomic level descriptions of sparsely populated, transiently formed biomolecular conformers

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2013-08, Vol.110 (32), p.12867-12874

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The importance of dynamics to biomolecular function is becoming increasingly clear. A description of the structure–function relationship must, therefore, include the role of motion, requiring a shift in paradigm from focus on a single static 3D picture to one where a given biomolecule is considered in terms of an ensemble of interconverting conformers, each with potentially diverse activities. In this Perspective, we describe how recent developments in solution NMR spectroscopy facilitate atomic resolution studies of sparsely populated, transiently formed biomolecular conformations that exchange with the native state. Examples of how this methodology is applied to protein folding and misfolding, ligand binding, and molecular recognition are provided as a means of illustrating both the power of the new techniques and the significant roles that conformationally excited protein states play in biology.