Monday, September 1, 2014

Antifreeze protein with a heart of ice

The four helical bundle of the large antifreeze protein Maxi is glued in one, not primarily by protein-protein interactions but via an extended network of water pentagons! See picture below. The protein was recently crystalized by Peter Davies and his group and published in Science, 2014


This finding points to an important open question: What is the contribution of internal water to the stability gap between different homologous proteins (psychrophilic, mesophilic and thermophilic)?

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