Software to design crosslinks for protein crystal stabilization
Date
2015
Authors
Sebesta, Jacob Christopher, author
Snow, Christopher, advisor
Fisk, Nick, committee member
Rappe, Anthony, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Programmable materials allow properties as specific locations in the material to be modified through reliable encoding. One class of such materials are protein crystals that allow changes to be made through genetic manipulation. Protein crystals are well-ordered and highly porous materials, but they are also easily dissolved, limiting their utility. Crosslinking techniques previously developed often have a deleterious effects on the crystal order. In this work, we introduce software to design specific crosslinks across protein crystal interfaces using disulfide and dityrosine crosslinks as well as a variety of small molecule crosslinkers used in protein conjugation. The software is a general tool for specific crosslinking that introduces a number of improvements on previous disulfide design software. Several of the disulfide and dityrosine designs were assembled in the lab and one of the disulfide crosslink designs was confirmed using X-ray diffraction.