Invited Review Nano-mechanics of proteins with possible applications

✍ Scribed by Atsushi Ikai

• Book ID: 102620697
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 273 KB
• Volume: 31
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6036
• DOI: 10.1006/spmi.2002.1023

✦ Synopsis

Results from recent work in the field of mechanical stretching of proteins and possible applications of the methodology developed in this field to nanotechnology are reviewed. A historical survey of this young and still emerging field starts from a short review of the foregoing work on nano-indentation, forced separation of interacting pairs of molecules, and bulk stretching of globular proteins, all using the atomic force microscope. Then a successful choice of titin, a giant muscle protein with tandemly repeated globular units, as a model protein in protein stretching work is reviewed. The work that was originated by the München group has had a strong impact on the promotion of this field as one of the recent foci in biophysics. After introducing major findings obtained from the work on titin and other proteins of similarly repeated modular structures, reports from our laboratory on the force-extension curves of bovine carbonic anhydrase II, a globular enzyme, and α-helical poly-L-glutamic acid are summarized. Finally several applications of force measurement methodologies to biochemical work are reviewed.