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Conformational Proofreading: The Impact of Conformational Changes on the Specificity of Molecular Recognition

Author(s)
Savir, YonatanTlusty, Tsvi
Issued Date
2007-05
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0000468
URI
https://scholarworks.unist.ac.kr/handle/201301/31202
Fulltext
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000468
Citation
PLOS ONE, v.2, no.5, pp.e468
Abstract
To perform recognition, molecules must locate and specifically bind their targets within a noisy biochemical environment with many look-alikes. Molecular recognition processes, especially the induced-fit mechanism, are known to involve conformational changes. This raises a basic question: Does molecular recognition gain any advantage by such conformational changes? By introducing a simple statistical-mechanics approach, we study the effect of conformation and flexibility on the quality of recognition processes. Our model relates specificity to the conformation of the participant molecules and thus suggests a possible answer: Optimal specificity is achieved when the ligand is slightly off target; that is, a conformational mismatch between the ligand and its main target improves the selectivity of the process. This indicates that deformations upon binding serve as a conformational proofreading mechanism, which may be selected for via evolution.
Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
ISSN
1932-6203

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