From dilute to concentrated solutions of intrinsically disordered proteins: Interpretation and analysis of collected data

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) have a broad energy landscape and consequently sample many different conformations in solution. The innate flexibility of IDPs is exploited in their biological function, and in many instances allows a single IDP to regulate a range of processes in vivo. Due to their highly flexible nature, characterizing the structural properties of IDPs is not straightforward. Often solution-based methods such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET), and Small-Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) are used. SAXS is indeed a powerful technique to study the structural and conformational properties of IDPs in solution, and from the obtained SAXS spectra, information about the average size, shape, and extent of oligomerization can be determined. In this chapter, we will introduce model-free methods that can be used to interpret SAXS data and introduce methods that can be used to interpret SAXS data beyond analytical models, for example, by using atomistic and different levels of coarse-grained models in combination with molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo simulations.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMethods in Enzymology
Volume678
Pages (from-to)299-330
ISSN0076-6879
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge financial support from the Crafoord Foundation, Sweden. The authors would like to thank the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, for the use of beamline BM29 and the excellent support over the years.

    Research areas

  • All-atom, BioSAXS, Coarse-grained, Computer simulations, Ensemble optimization method, IDPs, Intrinsically disordered proteins, Molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo, Proteins, Radius of gyration

ID: 329747126