Racemic & quasi-racemic protein crystallography enabled by chemical protein synthesis.

Racemic & quasi-racemic protein crystallography enabled by chemical protein synthesis. Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2018 Apr 04;46:1-9 Authors: Kent SB Abstract A racemic protein mixture can be used to form centrosymmetric crystals for structure determination by X-ray diffraction. Both the unnatural d-protein and the corresponding natural l-protein are made by total chemical synthesis based on native chemical ligation-chemoselective condensation of unprotected synthetic peptide segments. Racemic protein crystallography is important for structure determination of the many natural protein molecules that are refractory to crystallization. Racemic mixtures facilitate the crystallization of recalcitrant proteins, and give diffraction-quality crystals. Quasi-racemic crystallization, using a single d-protein molecule, can facilitate the determination of the structures of a series of l-protein analog molecules. PMID: 29626784 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Current Opinion in Chemical Biology - Category: Biochemistry Authors: Tags: Curr Opin Chem Biol Source Type: research