Engineering extrinsic disorder to control protein activity in living cells

Abstract

Engineering control of cellular proteins The ability to switch proteins between active and inactive conformations can give insight into their function. Dagliyan et al. present a method to insert domains that control protein activity. They computationally identified protein loops that are coupled to the active site. Sensory domains inserted into these loops could modulate protein activity when their conformation was changed by light or ligand binding. The authors engineered domains into three different classes of proteins involved in cell signaling and found that switching the proteins between active and inactive states could control the shape and movement of living cells. Science , this issue p. 1441