Croatica Chemica Acta, Vol. 79 No. 3, 2006.
Original scientific paper
Alpha-melanotropin Peptide: Structure and Ligand–Receptor Recognition
Karlo Houra
Nikola Štambuk
Paško Konjevoda
Alenka Boban-Blagaić
Tomislav Bruketa
Biserka Pokrić
Abstract
The hydropathic profile, secondary structure, epitope and binding site of the a-melanotropin molecule were investigated. It was shown that the standard algorithm according to Kyte and Doolittle may be combined with complex methods of the secondary structure prediction to extract the information relevant for the epitope location and modeling. The binding ligand-receptor motifs of the hormone were investigated by means of the SSpro8 method. The Molecular Recognition Theory combined with an NCBInr protein database search was applied to find the possible paratope (receptor) structures for the predicted a-melanotropin epitope (ligand). The described concept constitutes a useful and simple set of procedures for deriving new biologically active peptides and antibodies and also for performing modulation of peptide-receptor interaction.
Keywords
alpha-melanotropin; protein structure; ligand; receptor; recognition
Hrčak ID:
5630
URI
Publication date:
12.11.2006.
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