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Updated: May 26, 2026

Protein WISDOM: A Workbench for In silico De novo Design of BioMolecules
Published on: July 25, 2013
Engineering a zinc binding site into the de novo designed protein DS119 with a βαβ structure
Cheng Zhu1, Changsheng Zhang, Huanhuan Liang
1Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China.
Abstract:
Functional proteins designed de novo have potential application in chemical engineering, agriculture and healthcare. Metal binding sites are commonly used to incorporate functions. Based on a de novo designed protein DS119 with a βαβ structure, we have computationally engineered zinc binding sites into it using a home-made searching program. Seven out of the eight designed sequences tested were shown to bind Zn(2+) with micromolar affinity, and one of them bound Zn(2+) with 1:1 stoichiometry. This is the first time that metalloproteins with an α, β mixed structure have been designed from scratch.
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