Conformational and connotational heterogeneity: A surprising relationship between protein structural flexibility and puns

ABSTRACT Protein structures are often thought of as static objects, and indeed, the bulk of a protein's sequence forms α‐helices, β‐sheets, and other generally well‐ordered substructures. These portions of the molecule pre‐pay the entropic price of maintaining a globally unique fold, freeing ot...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proteins, structure, function, and bioinformatics structure, function, and bioinformatics, 2015-05, Vol.83 (5), p.797-798
Main Author: Keedy, Daniel A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Entropy
evolution
Heterogeneity
language
Models, Molecular
Protein Conformation
protein dynamics
protein structure
Proteins - chemistry
Proteins - physiology
rigidity
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Summary:ABSTRACT Protein structures are often thought of as static objects, and indeed, the bulk of a protein's sequence forms α‐helices, β‐sheets, and other generally well‐ordered substructures. These portions of the molecule pre‐pay the entropic price of maintaining a globally unique fold, freeing other regions to adopt multiple alternative conformations. In many cases, this localized flexibility is biologically interesting: it may be important for catalytic turnover or for conformational selection before forming an intermolecular complex, for example. Similarly, most of written language is carefully tuned to avoid ambiguity and convey a singular meaning, a cohesive message. This linguistic scaffolding in some sense pre‐pays a rhetorical price, paving the way for punctuated instances in which a given word or phrase can simultaneously adopt multiple alternative connotations—in other words, for puns. Proteins 2015; 83:797–798. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
ISSN:0887-3585
1097-0134
DOI:10.1002/prot.24765