Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
Annu Rev Biophys. 2012;41:41-61. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biophys-050511-102333. Epub 2012 Mar 14.
Although natural proteins are chiral and are all of one "handedness," their mirror image forms can be prepared by chemical synthesis. This opens up new opportunities for protein crystallography. A racemic mixture of the enantiomeric forms of a protein molecule can crystallize in ways that natural proteins cannot. Recent experimental data support a theoretical prediction that this should make racemic protein mixtures highly amenable to crystallization. Crystals obtained from racemic mixtures also offer advantages in structure determination strategies. The relevance of these potential advantages is heightened by advances in synthetic methods, which are extending the size limit for proteins that can be prepared by chemical synthesis. Recent ideas and results in the area of racemic protein crystallography are reviewed.
虽然天然蛋白质是手性的，且均具有一种“手性”，但其镜像形式可通过化学合成来制备。这为蛋白质晶体学开辟了新的机会。蛋白质分子的对映异构体的外消旋混合物可以以天然蛋白质无法结晶的方式结晶。最近的实验数据支持了一个理论预测，即这应该使外消旋蛋白质混合物非常易于结晶。从外消旋混合物中获得的晶体在结构测定策略中也具有优势。合成方法的进步扩大了可通过化学合成制备的蛋白质的大小限制，提高了这些潜在优势的相关性。综述了外消旋蛋白质晶体学领域的最新思路和结果。
