Pseudokinases: Functional Insights Gleaned from Structure

Pseudokinases are an intriguing group inside the large protein kinase family. Lacking the highly conserved catalytic machinery, they can be still important for multiple functions in living cells. The structures of two pseudokinases VRK3 (Scheeff et al., 2009) and ROP2 (Labesse et al., 2009), presented in this issue of Structure, shed light on the internal machinery of these unique molecules. Structural information allows us to go beyond sequence alone in the analysis of these pseudokinases