Nature Structural Biology pp 621 - 627

Scientists can now design proteins with a certain desired structure, but to engineer new functionality into proteins is still a significant challenge. A paper in the August issue of Nature Structural Biology reports a successful functional design effort. The designed molecule and the design process may become useful tools for high throughput research.

Using a computer-aided design algorithm, Gonzalez and coworkers at EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) successfully change the target specificity of a small protein domain, called the PDZ domain. They demonstrate that their engineered PDZ domains can correctly recognize target sequences of their choice with high affinity. Thus, the designed PDZ domains represent a promising tool for identifying and/or purifying protein components from a complex mixture. The use of computation algorithm significantly reduces the time necessary to construct and test the designed molecules. The designed process and the designed products may therefore be particularly useful for developing high throughput methods.