There are three major reasons why the insertion of disulfide bridges into a protein is important :
- To stabilize proteins against thermal denaturation - an approach often used in industrial biotechnology.
- To study the internal dynamics of a protein by blocking an open / closed or active / inactive state, this approach has made it possible to study several molecular mechanisms such as the movement of transmembrane helices in response to a stimulus.
- To link two domains or two proteins to one another, an approach often used to stabilize variable antibody fragments and for our projects on coagulation factors.
Theoretical concept and computational development performed by Wendy Chen.
