Engineering a zinc binding site into the de novo designed protein DS119 with a beta alpha beta structure

Functional proteins designed de novo have potential application in chemical engineering, agriculture and healthcare. Metal binding sites are commonly used to incorporate functions. Based on a de novo designed protein DS119 with a beta alpha beta structure, we have computationally engineered zinc binding sites into it using a home-made searching program. Seven out of the eight designed sequences tested were shown to bind Zn2+ with micromolar affinity, and one of them bound Zn2+ with 1:1 stoichiometry. This is the first time that metalloproteins with an alpha, beta mixed structure have been designed from scratch.Cell BiologySCI(E)PubMed中国科学引文数据库(CSCD)6ARTICLE121006-1013