Protein Tertiary Structure - Determinants of Tertiary Structure

Determinants of Tertiary Structure

In globular proteins, tertiary interactions are frequently stabilized by the sequestration of hydrophobic amino acid residues in the protein core, from which water is excluded, and by the consequent enrichment of charged or hydrophilic residues on the protein's water-exposed surface. In secreted proteins that do not spend time in the cytoplasm, disulfide bonds between cysteine residues help to maintain the protein's tertiary structure. A variety of common and stable tertiary structures appear in a large number of proteins that are unrelated in both function and evolution - for example, many proteins are shaped like a TIM barrel, named for the enzyme triosephosphateisomerase. Another common structure is a highly stable dimeric coiled coil structure composed of 2-7 alpha helices. Proteins are classified by the folds they represent in databases like SCOP and CATH.