Regulatory Genomics and Systems Biology

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The contribution of intrinsically disordered regions to protein function, cellular complexity, and human disease.

In the 1960s, Christian Anfinsen postulated that the unique three-dimensional structure of a protein is determined by its amino acid sequence. This work laid the foundation for the sequence-structure-function paradigm, which states that the sequence of a protein determines its structure, and structure determines function. However, a class of polypeptide segments called intrinsically disordered regions does not conform to this postulate. In this review, I will first describe established and emerging ideas about how disordered regions contribute to protein function. I will then discuss molecular principles by which regulatory mechanisms, such as alternative splicing and asymmetric localization of transcripts that encode disordered regions, can increase the functional versatility of proteins. Finally, I will discuss how disordered regions contribute to human disease and the emergence of cellular complexity during organismal evolution.

The review by M. Madan Babu can be found here.

Welcome to our sabbatical visitors!

Prof. Arthur M. Lesk from Pennsylvania State University has been visiting our group since last August, he will be here until the end of Summer. Dr Daniela Rhodes from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore visited us last month. Finally, we have Dr Richard Rottger from Denmark who joined our group as a sabbatical visitor last month. He will be with us for a couple of months.


Lesk_Arthur Daniela_Rhodes

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