Design of phage-displayed cystine-stabilized mini-protein libraries for proteinaceous binder engineering

Cystine-stabilized mini-proteins are important scaffolds in the combinatorial search of binders for molecular recognition. The structural determinants of a cystine-stabilized scaffold are the critical residues determining the formation of the native disulfide-bonding configuration, and thus should remain unchanged in the combinatorial libraries so as to allow a large portion of the library sequences to be compatible with the scaffold structure. A high-throughput molecular evolution procedure has been developed to select and screen for the polypeptide sequences folding into a specific cystine-stabilized structure. Patterns of sequence preference that emerge from the resultant sequence profiles provide structural determinant information, which facilitates the designs of combinatorial libraries for combinatorial approaches as in phage display. This methodology enables artificial cystine-stabilized proteins to be engineered with enhanced folding and binding properties.