Allosteric Switches: Remote Controls for Proteins
11-Mar-2009
Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2009, 48, 2 - 5 published on 11.03.2009
Angewandte Chemie, online article
Angewandte Chemie, online article
Chemical biology has multiple aims,[1] one of which is the identification of small-molecule modulators for individual functions of as many human proteins as possible. Various approaches towards this goal have been developed, which converge to create a toolbox of small molecules for chemical biologists.[2–4] This endeavor constitutes a long and winding road, however, on which shortcuts are welcome. One intriguing shortcut would be to control the activity of any protein of interest by fusing it to a universally applicable “switch” protein, for which an experimentally accessible control mechanism exists (Scheme 1).