Designing Stable Antiparallel Coiled Coil Dimers

The history of antiparallel coiled coil dimer design is briefly reviewed and the main principles governing the successful designs are explained. They include analysis of the inter-subunit electrostatic repulsion for determining partners for dimerization and of the buried polar interaction for determining the relative orientation of the partners. A theory is proposed to explain the lack of antiparallel coiled coil homodimers in nature