Dear colleagues,
We are working on a paper, where we want to discuss our crystal
structure. We have determined structure of non-active state first (much
easier). Than we tried to convert the protein into active state by
soaking (direct crystallization not possible). We have observed more
than a half of a protein chain in shifted location after soaking with
respect to the original conformation as a 50% alternative. We believe
that the alternative conformation corresponds to the active state and we
are looking for any other possible support to our statement.
My questions are:
Has anyone else observed active and non-active state of a protein in
single chain together as alternatives?
Has anyone an idea how to search through the PDB for such cases? Simple
going through all structures with alternatives does not seem to be
reasonable.
By the way, we are sure with the space group. Soaking may in some cases
cause symmetry reduction, but if we process the data in lower symmetry,
we see two chains with alternatives instead of one and this was not the
only reason for our decision about the space group. We have also
performed much more soaking experiments, but because of overall
difficulty and instability of the chemicals, this was the best
observation we ever had.
Thanks for any suggestion!
Best regards,
Petr
