The present and the future of motif-mediated protein–protein interactions

• Published in: Current opinion in structural biology 2018-06, Vol.50, p.162-170
• Main Authors: Seo, Moon-Hyeong, Kim, Philip M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amino Acid Motifs; Drug Discovery; Protein Binding; Protein Conformation; Protein Interaction Domains and Motifs; Protein Interaction Mapping - methods; Protein Interaction Maps - drug effects; Proteins - chemistry; Proteins - metabolism; Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship
• ISSN: 0959-440X; 1879-033X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.sbi.2018.04.005

•Motif-mediated interactions play key roles in essential cellular processes.•Due to distinctive properties of motifs—short, disordered and small interfaces—detection of them has been very challenging.•New systematic approaches have contributed to the identification of novel instances of motif-mediated interactions.•Many therapeutically relevant interactions have been discovered and can be targeted for drug development. Protein–protein interactions (PPIs) are essential to governing virtually all cellular processes. Of particular importance are the versatile motif-mediated interactions (MMIs), which are thus far underrepresented in available interaction data. This is largely due to technical difficulties inherent in the properties of MMIs, but due to the increasing recognition of the vital roles of MMIs in biology, several systematic approaches have recently been developed to detect novel MMIs. Consequently, rapidly growing numbers of motifs are being identified and pursued further for therapeutic applications. In this review, we discuss the current understanding on the diverse functions and disease-relevance of MMIs, the key methodologies for detection of MMIs, and the potential of MMIs for drug development.