Engineering surface epitopes to improve protein crystallization
OwnerWilliam N. Price, II, John F. Hunt, IIIinventors
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Abstract
Methods and systems for engineering surface epitopes, based on protein sequence characteristics with statistically significant influence on the likelihood of x-ray structure solution, to improve protein crystallization, as well as related material, are disclosed.
Claims19
A method of producing an engineered protein for high-resolution x-ray crystallographic structure determination, the method comprising:
- (a) selecting a protein of interest;
- (b) aligning the protein of interest with a homolog of the protein of interest;
- (c) predicting the secondary structure of the protein of interest;
- (d) identifying a target amino acid in the protein of interest that:
- (i) is part of a secondary structure element in the predicted secondary structure of the protein of interest;
- and
- (ii) is aligned with a replacement amino acid in the homolog of the protein of interest;
- and
- (e) replacing the target amino acid in the protein of interest with the replacement amino acid to provide an engineered protein of interest.
A system for designing an engineered protein for high-resolution x-ray crystallographic structure determination, the system comprising a computer having a processor and computer-readable program code for performing the following method:
- (a) selecting a protein of interest;
- (b) aligning the protein of interest with a homolog of the protein of interest;
- (c) predicting the secondary structure of the protein of interest;
- (d) identifying a target amino acid in the protein of interest that:
- (i) is part of a secondary structure element in the predicted secondary structure of the protein of interest;
- and
- (ii) is aligned with a replacement amino acid in the homolog of the protein of interest;
- and
- (e) replacing the target amino acid in the protein of interest with the replacement amino acid to provide an engineered protein of interest.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.