Requena Jesús R, Wille Holger
Prion. 2014 Jan-Feb;8(1):60-6. doi: 10.4161/pri.28368.
The structures of the infectious prion protein, PrP(Sc), and that of its proteolytically truncated variant, PrP 27-30, have evaded experimental determination due to their insolubility and propensity to aggregate. Molecular modeling has been used to fill this void and to predict their structures, but various modeling approaches have produced significantly different models. The disagreement between the different modeling solutions indicates the limitations of this method. Over the years, in absence of a three-dimensional (3D) structure, a variety of experimental techniques have been used to gain insights into the structure of this biologically, medically, and agriculturally important isoform. Here, we present an overview of experimental results that were published in recent years, and which provided new insights into the molecular architecture of PrP(Sc) and PrP 27-30. Furthermore, we evaluate all published models in light of these recent, experimental data, and come to the conclusion that none of the models can accommodate all of the experimental constraints. Moreover, this conclusion constitutes an open invitation for renewed efforts to model the structure of PrP(Sc).
感染性朊病毒蛋白PrP(Sc)及其蛋白水解截短变体PrP 27-30的结构,因其不溶性和聚集倾向而未能通过实验确定。分子建模已被用于填补这一空白并预测它们的结构,但各种建模方法产生了显著不同的模型。不同建模解决方案之间的分歧表明了该方法的局限性。多年来,在缺乏三维(3D)结构的情况下,人们使用了各种实验技术来深入了解这种在生物学、医学和农业上都很重要的异构体的结构。在这里,我们概述了近年来发表的实验结果,这些结果为PrP(Sc)和PrP 27-30的分子结构提供了新的见解。此外,我们根据这些最新的实验数据评估了所有已发表的模型,得出的结论是,没有一个模型能够满足所有的实验约束。此外,这一结论为重新努力构建PrP(Sc)的结构模型发出了公开邀请。