reviewInternational Journal of Molecular SciencesDec 12, 2014GOLD OA

What Macromolecular Crowding Can Do to a Protein

Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University · Institute of Cytology · +4 more institutions

PubMed
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Abstract

The intracellular environment represents an extremely crowded milieu, with a limited amount of free water and an almost complete lack of unoccupied space. Obviously, slightly salted aqueous solutions containing low concentrations of a biomolecule of interest are too simplistic to mimic the "real life" situation, where the biomolecule of interest scrambles and wades through the tightly packed crowd. In laboratory practice, such macromolecular crowding is typically mimicked by concentrated solutions of various polymers that serve as model "crowding agents". Studies under these conditions revealed that macromolecular crowding might affect protein structure, folding, shape, conformational stability, binding of…

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