Related Experiment Videos
Structure at 2.5 A of a designed peptide that maintains solubility of membrane proteins
C E Schafmeister1, L J Miercke, R M Stroud
1Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco 94143-0448.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
|October 29, 1993
Abstract:
A 24-amino acid peptide designed to solubilize integral membrane proteins has been synthesized. The design was for an amphipathic alpha helix with a "flat" hydrophobic surface that would interact with a transmembrane protein as a detergent. When mixed with peptide, 85 percent of bacteriorhodopsin and 60 percent of rhodopsin remained in solution over a period of 2 days in their native forms. The crystal structure of peptide alone showed it to form an antiparallel four-helix bundle in which monomers interact, flat surface to flat surface, as predicted.