Protein dynamics are critical to the structure and function of proteins. However, due to the complexity they inherently bring to the protein design problem, dynamics historically have not been considered in computational protein design (CPD). Herein, we present meta-MSD, a new CPD methodology for the design of protein dynamics. We applied our methodology to the design of a novel mode of conformational exchange in Streptococcal protein G domain B1, producing dynamic variants we termed DANCERs. Predictions were validated by NMR characterization of selected DANCERs, confirming that our meta-MSD framework is suitable for the computational design of protein dynamics. We then performed a thorough NMR characterization of the sequence determinants of dynamics in one DANCER, isolating two mutations responsible for the novel dynamics this protein exhibits. The first, A34F, is responsible for destabilizing the highly stable native G?1 conformation, allowing the protein to sample other conformational states. The second, V39L mediates subtle interactions that stabilize the designed conformational trajectory in the context of the A34F mutation. Together, these results highlight the role of protein plasticity in the development of dynamics and the need for highly accurate computational tools to approach similar design problems. Finally, we present an NMR-based characterization of structural dynamics in a family of related red fluorescent proteins (RFPs) and pinpoint regions of the RFP structure where dynamics correlate to RFP brightness. This overview of the RFP dynamics-function relationship will be used in future projects to perform a computation design of functional dynamics in RFPs.

Introduction to Proteins provides a comprehensive and state-of-the-art introduction to the structure, function, and motion of proteins for students, faculty, and researchers at all levels. The book covers proteins and enzymes across a wide range of contexts and applications, including medical disorders, drugs, toxins, chemical warfare, and animal behavior. Each chapter includes a Summary, Exercises, and References. New features in the thoroughly-updated second edition include: A brand-new chapter on enzymatic catalysis, describing enzyme biochemistry, classification, kinetics, thermodynamics, mechanisms, and applications in medicine and other industries. These are accompanied by multiple animations of biochemical reactions and mechanisms, accessible via embedded QR codes (which can be viewed by smartphones) An in-depth discussion of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) A wider-scale description of biochemical and biophysical methods for studying proteins, including fully accessible internet-based resources, such as databases and algorithms Animations of protein dynamics and conformational changes, accessible via embedded QR codes Additional features Extensive discussion of the energetics of protein folding, stability and interactions A comprehensive view of membrane proteins, with emphasis on structure-function relationship Coverage of intrinsically unstructured proteins, providing a complete, realistic view of the proteome and its underlying functions Exploration of industrial applications of protein engineering and rational drug design Each chapter includes a Summary, Exercies, and References Approximately 300 color images Downloadable solutions manual available at www.crcpress.com For more information, including all presentations, tables, animations, and exercises, as well as a complete teaching course on proteins' structure and function, please visit the author's website. Praise for the first edition "This book captures, in a very accessible way, a growing body of literature on the structure, function and motion of proteins. This is a superb publication that would be very useful to undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and instructors involved in structural biology or biophysics courses or in research on protein structure-function relationships." --David Sheehan, ChemBioChem, 2011 "Introduction to Proteins is an excellent, state-of-the-art choice for students, faculty, or researchers needing a monograph on protein structure. This is an immensely informative, thoroughly researched, up-to-date text, with broad coverage and remarkable depth. Introduction to Proteins would provide an excellent basis for an upper-level or graduate course on protein structure, and a valuable addition to the libraries of professionals interested in this centrally important field." --Eric Martz, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 2012

As the tools and techniques of structural biophysics assume greater roles in biological research and a range of application areas, learning how proteins behave becomes crucial to understanding their connection to the most basic and important aspects of life. With more than 350 color images throughout, Introduction to Proteins: Structure, Function, and Motion presents a unified, in-depth treatment of the relationship between the structure, dynamics, and function of proteins. Taking a structural–biophysical approach, the authors discuss the molecular interactions and thermodynamic changes that transpire in these highly complex molecules. The text incorporates various biochemical, physical, functional, and medical aspects. It covers different levels of protein structure, current methods for structure determination, energetics of protein structure, protein folding and folded state dynamics, and the functions of intrinsically unstructured proteins. The authors also clarify the structure–function relationship of proteins by presenting the principles of protein action in the form of guidelines. This comprehensive, color book uses numerous proteins as examples to illustrate the topics and principles and to show how proteins can be analyzed in multiple ways. It refers to many everyday applications of proteins and enzymes in medical disorders, drugs, toxins, chemical warfare, and animal behavior. Downloadable questions for each chapter are available at CRC Press Online.

Each title in the 'Primers in Biology' series is constructed on a modular principle that is intended to make them easy to teach from, to learn from, and to use for reference.

Protein Actions: Principles and Modeling is aimed at graduates, advanced undergraduates, and any professional who seeks an introduction to the biological, chemical, and physical properties of proteins. Broadly accessible to biophysicists and biochemists, it will be particularly useful to student and professional structural biologists and molecular biophysicists, bioinformaticians and computational biologists, biological chemists (particularly drug designers) and molecular bioengineers. The book begins by introducing the basic principles of protein structure and function. Some readers will be familiar with aspects of this, but the authors build up a more quantitative approach than their competitors. Emphasizing concepts and theory rather than experimental techniques, the book shows how proteins can be analyzed using the disciplines of elementary statistical mechanics, energetics, and kinetics. These chapters illuminate how proteins attain biologically active states and the properties of those states. The book ends with a synopsis the roles of computational biology and bioinformatics in protein science.

Protein folding is considered to be one of the grand challenge problems in biology. Protein folding refers to how a protein's amino acid sequence, under certain physiological conditions, folds into a stable close-packed three-dimensional structure known as the native state. There are two major problems in protein folding. One, usually called protein structure prediction, is to predict the structure of the protein's native state given only the amino acid sequence. Another important and strongly related problem, often called protein folding, is to study how the amino acid sequence dynamically transitions from an unstructured state to the native state. In this dissertation, we concentrate on the second problem. There are several approaches that have been applied to the protein folding problem, including molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo methods, statistical mechanical models, and lattice models. However, most of these approaches suffer from either overly-detailed simulations, requiring impractical computation times, or overly-simplified models, resulting in unrealistic solutions. In this work, we present a novel motion planning based framework for studying protein folding. We describe how it can be used to approximately map a protein's energy landscape, and then discuss how to find approximate folding pathways and kinetics on this approximate energy landscape. In particular, our technique can produce potential energy landscapes, free energy landscapes, and many folding pathways all from a single roadmap. The roadmap can be computed in a few hours on a desktop PC using a coarse potential energy function. In addition, our motion planning based approach is the first simulation method that enables the study of protein folding kinetics at a level of detail that is appropriate (i.e., not too detailed or too coarse) for capturing possible 2-state and 3-state folding kinetics that may coexist in one protein. Indeed, the unique ability of our method to produce large sets of unrelated folding pathways may potentially provide crucial insight into some aspects of folding kinetics that are not available to other theoretical techniques.