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Updated: May 16, 2026

Assessment of Immunologically Relevant Dynamic Tertiary Structural Features of the HIV-1 V3 Loop Crown R2 Sequence by ab initio Folding
Published on: September 15, 2010
Structure and dynamics of a primordial catalytic fold generated by in vitro evolution
Fa-An Chao1, Aleardo Morelli, John C Haugner
1Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Abstract:
Engineering functional protein scaffolds capable of carrying out chemical catalysis is a major challenge in enzyme design. Starting from a noncatalytic protein scaffold, we recently generated a new RNA ligase by in vitro directed evolution. This artificial enzyme lost its original fold and adopted an entirely new structure with substantially enhanced conformational dynamics, demonstrating that a primordial fold with suitable flexibility is sufficient to carry out enzymatic function.
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