1 α/β Coiled Coils 2 3 Marcus D. Hartmann, Claudia T. Mendler†, Jens Bassler, Ioanna Karamichali, Oswin 4 Ridderbusch‡, Andrei N. Lupas* and Birte Hernandez Alvarez* 5 6 Department of Protein Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, 72076 7 Tübingen, Germany 8 † present address: Nuklearmedizinische Klinik und Poliklinik, Klinikum rechts der Isar, 9 Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany 10 ‡ present address: Vossius & Partner, Siebertstraße 3, 81675 Munich, Germany 11 12 13 14 * correspondence to A. N. Lupas or B. Hernandez Alvarez: 15 Department of Protein Evolution 16 Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology 17 Spemannstr. 35 18 D-72076 Tübingen 19 Germany 20 Tel. –49 7071 601 356 21 Fax –49 7071 601 349 22
[email protected],
[email protected] 23 1 24 Abstract 25 Coiled coils are the best-understood protein fold, as their backbone structure can uniquely be 26 described by parametric equations. This level of understanding has allowed their manipulation 27 in unprecedented detail. They do not seem a likely source of surprises, yet we describe here 28 the unexpected formation of a new type of fiber by the simple insertion of two or six residues 29 into the underlying heptad repeat of a parallel, trimeric coiled coil. These insertions strain the 30 supercoil to the breaking point, causing the local formation of short β-strands, which move the 31 path of the chain by 120° around the trimer axis. The result is an α/β coiled coil, which retains 32 only one backbone hydrogen bond per repeat unit from the parent coiled coil.