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Published on: June 3, 2022
The Diverse Structures and Functions of Surfactant Proteins
Marieke Schor1, Jack L Reid2, Cait E MacPhee1
1School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
None:
Surface tension at liquid-air interfaces is a major barrier that needs to be surmounted by a wide range of organisms; surfactant and interfacially active proteins have evolved for this purpose. Although these proteins are essential for a variety of biological processes, our understanding of how they elicit their function has been limited. However, with the recent determination of high-resolution 3D structures of several examples, we have gained insight into the distinct shapes and mechanisms that have evolved to confer interfacial activity. It is now a matter of harnessing this information, and these systems, for biotechnological purposes.
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