Current Opinion in Structural Biology
Current Opinion in Structural Biology
5 years ago

Specificity of glycosaminoglycan–protein interactions

Specificity of glycosaminoglycan–protein interactions
Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) interact with a variety of proteins with important functions in development and homeostasis. Most of these proteins bind to heparin in vitro, a highly sulfated GAG species, although heparan sulfate and/or chondroitin/dermatan sulfate are more frequent physiological ligands. Binding affinity and specificity are determined by charge distribution, mainly due to sulfate and carboxylate groups and by GAG chain conformation. Interactions may be nonspecific, essentially reflecting charge density or highly specific, dependent on rare GAG-structural features. Yet other GAG epitopes bind protein ligands with intermediate specificity and variable affinity. Studies of heparan sulfate biosynthesis point to stochastic but strictly regulated, cell-specific polymer modification. Together, these features allow for graded modulation of protein functional response.

Publisher URL: www.sciencedirect.com/science

DOI: S0959440X17301495

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.