Here, we demonstrate that a metal ion binding motif could serve as an efficient and robust tool for site-specific conjugation strategy. Cysteine-containing metal binding motifs were constructed as single repeat or tandem repeat peptides and their metal binding characteristics were investigated. The tandem repeats of the Cysteine-Glycine-Histidine (CGH) metal ion binding motif exhibited concerte...

The cysteine-rich protein (CRP) contains two copies of the LIM sequence motif, CX2CX17HX2CX2CX2CX17-CX2C, that was first identified in the homeodomain proteins Lin-11, Is1-1, and Mec-3. The abundance and spacing of the cysteine residues in the LIM motif are reminiscent of a metal-binding domain. We examined the metal-binding properties of CRP isolated from chicken smooth muscle (cCRP) and from ...

Protein dimerization is essential for cellular processes including regulation and biosignalling. While protein-protein interactions can occur through many modes, this review will focus on those interactions mediated through the binding of metal ions to the proteins. Selected techniques used to study protein-protein interactions, including size exclusion chromatography, mass spectrometry, affini...

Phage-display technology was used to evolve peptides that selectively bind to the metal-oxide hematite (Fe2O3) from a library of approximately 3 billion different polypeptides. The sequences of these peptides contained the highly conserved amino acid motif, Ser/Thr-hydrophobic/aromatic-Ser/Thr-Pro-Ser/Thr. To better understand the nature of the peptide-metal oxide binding demonstrated by these ...

A significant role of zinc-binding motifs on metal mobility in Escherichia coli was explored using a chimeric metal-binding green fluorescent protein (GFP) as an intracellular zinc indicator. Investigation was initiated by co-transformation and co-expression of two chimeric genes encoding the chimeric GFP carrying hexahistidine (His6GFP) and the zinc-binding motif fused to outer membrane protei...

To identify functional structural motifs from protein structures of unknown function becomes increasingly important in recent years due to the progress of the structural genomics initiatives. Although certain structural patterns such as the Asp-His-Ser catalytic triad are easy to detect because of their conserved residues and stringently constrained geometry, it is usually more challenging to d...

Hammerhead ribozymes have a metal-ion-binding motif in the conserved core region, and this motif can capture several kinds of metal ions. In order to determine what kind of metal ions can be recognized by the motif, we measured 2D 1H-1H NOESY spectra in the presence of various metal ions, such as Cd2+, Na+ and Co(NH3)6(3+) ions, as well as in the absence of these ions. We have completed the ass...