sarelf Lv 1
Hi all,
With the recent successes of design of binders to influenza hemagglutinin we've started targeting a protein that has never been shown to bind to any other protein. Success in this project implies that we can target many different protein surfaces and would open up the way to the design of new pathogen inhibitors and diagnostics that have been impossible to target with other experimental strategies.
We have identified several proteins that bind to this target protein, but they do so only weakly. In this puzzle we ask for your help in improving binding affinity. We identified a loop on the binding protein that we think could be reformed to generate conformations that would interact more favorably with the target protein. In this puzzle we hold fixed key residues on the binder protein and ask you to add up to 3 residues in this loop, reform it, and redesign its sequence.
I'm looking forward to seeing your designs!
Sarel.