All proteins are made of basic secondary structure units, either α-helix or β-sheets, determined by hydrogen bonding between the amino acids within a peptide chain. On a larger scale, structures are ...

Cells assemble protein networks through regions of protein recognition that are found in numerous proteins as conserved peptide motifs. This allows for the specific and efficient communication of ...

How did life originate? Ancient proteins may hold important clues. Every organism on Earth is made up of proteins. Although all organisms—even single-celled ones—have complex protein structures now, ...

A study has found that an ancient protein motif that binds to nucleic acids is functionally "ambidextrous." This means that the motif can interact with both natural and mirror-image nucleic acids, an ...

Only recently appreciated as critical components of cellular functions, unstructured stretches of amino acids called SLiMs are key to viral-host interactions. During an early COVID-19 lockdown in ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Synthetic biology author. May 13, 2021, 09:00am EDT May 13, 2021, 09:14am EDT This article is more than 4 years old. Motif’s ...

In a recent study posted to the bioRxiv* preprint server, researchers performed a ProP-PD (proteomic peptide phage display) analysis to identify peptides from intrinsically disordered human (host) ...

Researchers found a rare example of an ancient protein that can still function in a molecular mirror world – offering new clues about the evolutionary history of proteins that bind to nucleic acids.