Anarchy in the Pathway?

We’d be nothing without our proteins – they transport signals around cells , and so have a hand in regulating every single process in our bodies.  Scientists know that one way proteins accomplish this transport is to fold themselves into a specific shape that corresponds with a particular molecule.  Picture a lock that only opens for one key.  Nice and orderly, right?

Well, what if I told you that up to 30 percent of the proteins in your body aren’t so orderly?  That instead of hanging around waiting for that one key to show up, these little protein anarchists (scientists refer to them as intrinsically disordered proteins) are capable of interacting with a bunch of different molecules?

Chaos!  Dogs and cats, living together!

Or possibly a much more efficient and adaptive way for signaling pathways in our body to work.

NC State physicist Dr. Keith Weninger is helping scientists to define how these intrinsically disordered proteins function. By studying the ones involved in neural pathways, he and his collaborators have found that they may not be completely anarchic – or random – in their behavior after all.

“The conventional wisdom with these proteins was that they were random – because the tools we had to measure their activities were essentially averaging the behaviors of a group of these proteins, instead of looking at just one. But we’ve improved our measuring techniques, and what we found was that these proteins aren’t random – they can have a pattern to their behavior.

“Some of these disordered proteins do fold, in the regular ‘lock and key’ way, but they are capable of folding to fit a variety of molecules, instead of just one, and then unfolding again when they’ve transported the signal. This way they can adapt to a lot of different binding partners.”

Could this capability be important to our nervous system’s ability to rapidly convey information? Are these wannabe anarchist proteins found only in certain pathways? No one can say for sure, but thanks to Weninger, we’re one step closer to finding out.