beta_helix Staff Lv 1
Foldon is a small, 27 residue domain from the C-terminus of a phage virus protein called fibritin. It functions to ensure trimerization and proper folding of the rest of the fibritin domain, but it folds just as capably in isolation. Biophysicists have taken note of its remarkable stability and propensity for trimerization, and have successfully fused foldon to other domains, forming a number of engineered trimeric proteins.
Your job, in this puzzle, is to take an opposite approach. Instead of attaching three copies of a known domain to foldon in order to form a trimer, you’ll be given twenty extra residues extending from foldon’s
N-terminus and asked to fold these chains into a larger trimeric domain that includes foldon. You’ll be allowed to move foldon around as well, but you can only mutate the residues in the polyalanine extension. And remember, three-fold symmetry will be enforced!
Our hope is to synthesize one of your best-scoring structures, in an attempt to generate (via NMR or X-ray crystallography) an experimental structure!
We’ll be using foldon, and some of the larger trimer domains that you generate, in our efforts to make higher-order assemblies: rigid crystals, capsules, and nanowires.
