Protein heterodimer complexes are often involved in catalysis, regulation, assembly, immunity and inhibition. This involves the formation of stable interfaces between the interacting partners. Hence, it is of interest to describe heterodimer interfaces using known structural complexes. We use a non-redundant dataset of 192 heterodimer complex structures from the protein databank (PDB) to identi...

DNA helicases catalyze the essential process of unwinding duplex DNA to form the single-stranded DNA intermediates required for DNA metabolic processes including replication, recombination, and repair. Most cells, possibly all, encode multiple helicases that function selectively in different processes, although some helicases can complement each other in vivo. Thus, although Escherichia coli ca...

The K1 and K10 associated genodermatoses are characterized by clinical symptoms of mild to severe redness, blistering and hypertrophy of the skin. In this paper, we set out to computationally investigate the structural and functional effects of missense mutations on the 2B domain of K1/K10 heterodimer and its consequences in disease phenotype. We modeled the structure of the K1/K10 heterodimer ...

Protein-protein interactions can be designed computationally by using positive strategies that maximize the stability of the desired structure and/or by negative strategies that seek to destabilize competing states. Here, we compare the efficacy of these methods in reengineering a protein homodimer into a heterodimer. The stability-design protein (positive design only) was experimentally more s...

The heterodimeric pre-mRNA splicing factor, U2AF (U2 snRNP auxiliary factor), plays a critical role in 3' splice site selection. Although the U2AF subunits associate in a tight complex, biochemical experiments designed to address the requirement for both subunits in splicing have yielded conflicting results. We have taken a genetic approach to assess the requirement for the Drosophila U2AF hete...

The vaccinia virus-encoded heterodimer responsible for poly(A) tail elongation comprises a polyadenylylation catalytic subunit (VP55) and associated processivity factor (VP39). We show that monomeric VP39's affinity for RNA homopolymers follows the hierarchy poly(I) >poly(U) >>poly(G) >poly(A) >poly(C), that the heterodimer interacts stably with 40-45 nucleotide nucleic acid segments, and that ...

The CXCR4 chemokine receptor is a G protein-coupled receptor that signals in T lymphocytes by forming a heterodimer with the TCR. CXCR4 and TCR functions are consequently highly cross regulated, affecting T cell immune activation, cytokine secretion, and T cell migration. The CXCR4-TCR heterodimer stimulates T cell migration and activation of the ERK MAPK and downstream AP-1-dependent cytokine ...

The ultimate step common to almost all DNA repair pathways is the ligation of the nicked intermediate to form contiguous double-stranded DNA. In the mammalian nucleotide and base excision repair pathways, the ligation step is carried out by ligase III-α. For efficient ligation, ligase III-α is constitutively bound to the scaffolding protein XRCC1 through interactions between the C-terminal BRCT...

In the archaeal RNA polymerase and the eukaryotic RNA polymerase II, two subunits (E/F and RPB4/RPB7, respectively) form a heterodimer that reversibly associates with the core of the enzyme. Recently it has emerged that this heterodimer also has a counterpart in the other eukaryotic RNA polymerases: in particular two subunits of RNA polymerase I (A14 and A43) display genetic and biochemical cha...

Striatal adenosine A2A receptors (A2ARs) modulate striatal synaptic plasticity and instrumental learning, possibly by functional interaction with the dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) and metabotropic glutamate receptors 5 (mGluR5) through receptor-receptor heterodimers, but in vivo evidence for these interactions is lacking. Using in situ proximity ligation assay (PLA), we studied the subregional d...