Figures
Nearing the structure of the human huntingtin protein.
For many years, it has been known that mutations in the human huntingtin protein are responsible for Huntington chorea, a neurodegenerative disease. However, very little is known about the structure and function of this long protein. Using a computational method on a sequence alignment of huntingtin with its orthologs (output shown in the background), we have predicted that this protein contains three elongated domains (alpha-rods, yellow cylinders) that are involved in intramolecular (left) and intermolecular (right) interactions (see Palidwor et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000304). This work opens avenues for further characterization of huntingtin and other proteins with alpha-rods.
Image Credit: Cartoon created using Google SketchUp and BiasViz by Miguel Andrade-Navarro (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Germany).
Citation: (2009) PLoS Computational Biology Issue Image | Vol. 5(3) March 2009. PLoS Comput Biol 5(3): ev05.i03. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pcbi.v05.i03
Published: March 27, 2009
Copyright: © 2009 Miguel Andrade-Navarro. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
For many years, it has been known that mutations in the human huntingtin protein are responsible for Huntington chorea, a neurodegenerative disease. However, very little is known about the structure and function of this long protein. Using a computational method on a sequence alignment of huntingtin with its orthologs (output shown in the background), we have predicted that this protein contains three elongated domains (alpha-rods, yellow cylinders) that are involved in intramolecular (left) and intermolecular (right) interactions (see Palidwor et al., doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000304). This work opens avenues for further characterization of huntingtin and other proteins with alpha-rods.
Image Credit: Cartoon created using Google SketchUp and BiasViz by Miguel Andrade-Navarro (Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Germany).