Record Holding Proteins
Why would Yellowstone Park sign an agreement with a bioprospecting company?
Because it has potentially useful organisms that can stand extremely high
temperatures. When you heat proteins, usually their bonds come apart and
the proteins themselves fall apart. But some protein enzymes can withstand
incredibly high temperatures. These may be useful as detergents, and in
the making of drugs.
These heat-loving, or "thermophilic" enzymes have some structural
strategies for staying together, including:
- adding stiffness to sections
- locking a chain in place with sulfur bonds
- making a salt bridge between amino acids.
Several scientists have studied carefully one soil enzyme of a soil bacteria,
one that snips proteins apart, and found that one particular region was
the first to unfold. They replaced this area, and the resulting bacteria
could stand much higher temperatures. Some scientists think that these proteins
are more typical of the way enzymes have worked for most of evolution. They
just got used to lower tempatures as the earth cooled.
Wu, Corinna Hot-Blooded Proteins: Heat-loving enzymes stay cool under stress
Science News Vol. 153 May 9, 1998 p. 297-8.
Further work: Find out which proteins can stand low temperatures,
high or low acidity, high or low salt.
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