Visualizing Proteins as (a)periodic Mosaics

FERREIRO, DU

San Pablo

Simposio; Symposium on Current Topics in Molecular Biophysics; 2014

USP

Energy landscape theory indicates that it is much easier to find foldable sequences when a structure is symmetric. Similarly, repeats and structural mosaics may be fundamentally related to landscapes with multiple embedded funnels. I´ll present analytical tools to detect and compare structural repetitions in protein molecules. By an exhaustive analysis of the distribution of structural repeats we define those portions of a protein that best describe the overall structure as a tessellation of basic units. The patterns produced by such tessellations provide intuitive representations of the repeating regions and their association toward higher order arrangements.