Herbert A, O'leary J, Krych-Goldberg M, Atkinson J P, Barlow P N
Department of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh, UK.
Biochem Soc Trans. 2002 Nov;30(Pt 6):990-6. doi: 10.1042/bst0300990.
Members of the regulator of complement activation (RCA) protein family perform a vital role in health and disease. In this report we describe our efforts to solve the structures of human membrane cofactor protein (CD46), the vaccinia virus complement control protein, which mimics mammalian RCA proteins, and human complement receptor type 1 (CD35). These examples illustrate that, despite good progress over the last decade, the regulators of complement, as extracellular multiple domain glycoproteins, still pose formidable problems to structural biologists. Many important questions remain unanswered, in particular with regard to the flexibility of these proteins and the extent to which they undergo conformational rearrangements on engaging their binding partners.
补体激活调节因子（RCA）蛋白家族成员在健康和疾病中发挥着至关重要的作用。在本报告中，我们描述了为解析人膜辅因子蛋白（CD46）、模拟哺乳动物RCA蛋白的痘苗病毒补体控制蛋白以及人补体受体1型（CD35）的结构所做的努力。这些例子表明，尽管在过去十年中取得了良好进展，但补体调节因子作为细胞外多结构域糖蛋白，对结构生物学家来说仍然构成巨大挑战。许多重要问题仍未得到解答，特别是关于这些蛋白质的灵活性以及它们在与结合伴侣结合时发生构象重排的程度。
