The contribution of intrinsically disordered regions to protein function, cellular complexity, and human disease

In the 1960s, Christian Anfinsen postulated that the unique three-dimensional structure of a protein is determined by its amino acid sequence. This work laid the foundation for the sequence–structure–function paradigm, which states that the sequence of a protein determines its structure, and structure determines function. However, a class of polypeptide segments called intrinsically disordered regions does not conform to this postulate. In this review, I will first describe established and emerging ideas about how disordered regions contribute to protein function. I will then discuss molecular principles by which regulatory mechanisms, such as alternative splicing and asymmetric localization of transcripts that encode disordered regions, can increase the functional versatility of proteins. Finally, I will discuss how disordered regions contribute to human disease and the emergence of cellular complexity during organismal evolution.

• Publication year

  2016

• Venue

  Biochemical Society Transactions

• Publication date

  2016-10-15

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1042/BST20160172PMID 27911701PMCID 5095923
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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