Gershkovich K B, Rozenfel'd M A
Mol Biol (Mosk). 1989 Mar-Apr;23(2):596-604.
The methods of viscosimetry, the Rayleigh light-scattering and analytical ultracentrifugation were applied to study the physicochemical mechanism of the effect of fragment D on the structure of fibrin equilibrium oligomers. Using the values of intrinsic viscosity, weight average molecular masses and mass/length ratio it was shown that when producing an antipolymerization effect the fragment D retains the three-dimensional organization of fibrin polymers, i.e. rigid rod-like single- and double-stranded protofibrillas. The paper has proved that along with the traditional mechanism of inhibiting self-assembly of of the double-stranded structure due to the competition of fragment D with fibrin monomer for central domain E there is an alternative attributed to its attachment to a peripheral region of the fibrin monomer. The second mechanism is the only one which occurs in the region of single-stranded pseudoprotofibrillas existence. The role of alpha C-domains in protein-protein interactions is also discussed.