Macromolecular Modeling Blog ™

Amelie Stein, Roland A Pache, Pau Bernadó, Miquel Pons, Patrick Aloy (FEBS Journal, 2009)

This recent mini-review by Stein et al. focuses on the mechanisms that enable dynamic, transient, short lived interactions in cellular networks. Of special interest are the always popular “motif recognition domain”-”short flexible peptide” interactions. However, post translational modifications and regulation by disorder are also discussed. We concise the review further to some basic/interesting/anecdotal/”pondering worthy” points.

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Carlos J. Camacho et al. study the relationship between peptide stabilities and their immunogenicity. They present a model system of several peptides corresponding to portions of murine HRS which are capable of inducing anti-protein antibodies of varying affinity and temporal persistence. On this system they show by molecular dynamics simulations, that sequences of the most immunogenic peptides correspond to highly ordered structural motifs in the parent protein. Competitive ELISAs provide direct evidence that these peptides share structural determinants with native protein. More interestingly they address the question of how can these less stable peptides induce the same immunogenic response. By Nir London

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