Project Name: “Structural and metabolic reconstruction of Thermotoga Maritima”.
Project Descriptions: Combining efforts of structural genomics and molecular modeling centers we modeled 3D protein structure of core metabolic network of a hyperthermophilic bacterium, Thermotoga maritima, thus connecting metabolic simulations and structural biology. Exploring synergies between these two research fields opens up applications from detailed analysis of enzyme-substrate interactions to the study of evolution of metabolic networks.

Project Name: “Analysis of ‘Dual Personality’ protein fragments”
Project Descriptions: In their natural environment three-dimensional structures of proteins undergo significant fluctuations and often are partially or completely disordered. The later phenomena recently became focus of much attention, as research shows that many proteins, especially those from higher organisms, contain large segments of intrinsically disordered regions that get ordered, if ever, only in very specific circumstances. Such intrinsically disordered regions are recognized by specific amino acid compositions and sequence signatures. Here we suggest that the balance between order and disorder is much more subtle, with many fragments being very close to the order/disorder boundary. Analysis of redundant sets of experimental models of protein structures, where emphasis is put on comparison of structures of identical proteins solved in different conditions and functional states, shows thousands of fragments captured in two states – ordered and disordered. We show that such fragments, which we call here “dual-personality”, have distinctive features that differentiate them both from regularly folded and intrinsically disordered fragments. We hypothesize, and show on several examples, that such fragments are often targets of regulation, either by allostery or post-translational modifications.


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