Abstract

Two fundamental principles can account for how regulated networks of interacting proteins originated in cells. These are the law of mass action, which holds that the binding of one molecule to another increases with concentration, and the fact that the colocalization of molecules vastly increases their local concentrations. It follows that colocalization can amplify the effect on one protein of random mutations in another protein and can therefore, through natural selection, lead to interactions between proteins and to a startling variety of complex allosteric controls. It also follows that allostery is common and that homologous proteins can have different allosteric mechanisms. Thus, the regulated protein networks of organisms seem to be the inevitable consequence of natural selection operating under physical laws.

1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
2. Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
3. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California at Los Angeles–Department of Energy Institute of Genomics and Proteomics, Institute of Molecular Biology, Department of Biological Chemistry, and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.