Conformational Sub-States and Transient Heterogeneity in Enzyme Function
A special issue of Catalysts (ISSN 2073-4344). This special issue belongs to the section "Catalytic Materials".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2018)
Special Issue Editors
Interests: protein dynamics; NMR relaxation; enzyme engineering; protein design; biotechnology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Enzymes are highly-flexible macromolecules that experience short- and long-range degrees of motion over length and time scales spanning multiple orders of magnitude. Atomic flexibility may dictate random thermodynamic sampling or populate well-defined temporal macro- and micro-states that relate to functionally relevant local and global atomic arrangements. In several enzyme systems, these sparsely-populated 'conformational sub-states' are known to be essential for achieving optimal catalysis and/or proper ligand positioning in the active site, suggesting that these transient structures may be the result of evolutionary pressure to optimize enzyme efficiency. This Special Issue of Catalysts will illustrate how experimental and computational methodologies provide evidence on the functional importance of transiently-populated enzyme sub-states that define conformational heterogeneity in enzymes. Studies will highlight the role of enzyme motions/dynamics at different time and length scales in detailed enzyme mechanisms, and the changes in conformational populations as the enzyme cycles through the reaction coordinates. Conformational studies inform on the mechanistic and structural importance of atomic flexibility in enzymes, and how that information can be leveraged towards the development of new catalysts. We are also interested in highlighting how enzyme technology is impacting a wide variety of fields from medicine to chemical industry.
Prof. Dr. Nicolas Doucet
Dr. Pratul Agarwal
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- conformational dynamics
- sub-states
- protein motions
- conformational transitions
- populations
- allosteric communication
- dynamical networks
- enzyme catalysis
