Insight into Calcium-Binding Motifs of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 1.21 MB, PDF document

Motifs within proteins help us categorize their functions. Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are rich in short linear motifs, conferring them many different roles. IDPs are also frequently highly charged and, therefore, likely to interact with ions. Canonical calcium-binding motifs, such as the EF-hand, often rely on the formation of stabilizing flanking helices, which are a key characteristic of folded proteins, but are absent in IDPs. In this study, we probe the existence of a calcium-binding motif relevant to IDPs. Upon screening several carefully selected IDPs using NMR spectroscopy supplemented with affinity quantification by colorimetric assays, we found calcium-binding motifs in IDPs which could be categorized into at least two groups—an Excalibur-like motif, sequentially similar to the EF-hand loop, and a condensed-charge motif carrying repetitive negative charges. The motifs show an affinity for calcium typically in the ~100 µM range relevant to regulatory functions and, while calcium binding to the condensed-charge motif had little effect on the overall compaction of the IDP chain, calcium binding to Excalibur-like motifs resulted in changes in compaction. Thus, calcium binding to IDPs may serve various structural and functional roles that have previously been underreported.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1173
JournalBiomolecules
Volume11
Issue number8
Number of pages17
ISSN2218-273X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Bibliographical note

This article belongs to the Special Issue Protein Intrinsic Disorder: Role in Signaling, Regulation and Membrane-Less Organelle Formation

    Research areas

  • Calcium, IDP, Intrinsically disordered proteins, Motifs, NMR, SLiM

Number of downloads are based on statistics from Google Scholar and www.ku.dk


No data available

ID: 279622658