Physics Commons^™

On The Electrostatic Properties Of Homodimeric Proteins, Brandon Campbell, Marharyta Petukh, Emil Alexov, Chuan Li

Publications

A large fraction of proteins function as homodimers, but it is not always clear why the dimerization is important for functionality since frequently each monomer possesses a distinctive active site. Recent work (PLoS Computational Biology, 9(2), e1002924) indicates that homodimerization may be important for forming an electrostatic funnel in the spermine synthase homodimer which guides changed substrates toward the active centers. This prompted us to investigate the electrostatic properties of a large set of homodimeric proteins and resulted in an observation that in a vast majority of the cases the dimerization indeed results in specific electrostatic features, although not necessarily …