Re: Science, Aug 2nd

Simon Brocklehurst (smb@bioch.ox.ac.uk)
Mon, 19 Aug 1996 14:01:28 +0100 (BST)

> Discussion, anyone?
>
Good idea Iddo! I should say that I didn't read the whole paper, just the
abstract. So I'm not in really in a good position to contribute at this
point. Nevertheless, I think it might be a good idea to try to
establish more clearly what the authors mean in the key sentence that Ido
quoted. I've just one question to start with...

"protein structures are selected because they are... stable
against mutations"

What kind of mutations are we talking about here?

Surely, in _general_ proteins are actually NOT stable against
mutations... and this would be _especially_ true of very
small proteins e.g. a 27-mer, wouldn't it?

Proteins are really only stable against _conservative_
mutations e.g. polar->polar, hydrophobic->hydrophobic.

Any comments anyone? What are the authors getting at?

-- Simon
_____________________________________________________________________________
|
| ,_ o Simon M. Brocklehurst,
| / //\, Oxford Centre for Molecular Sciences, Department of Biochemistry,
| \>> | University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
| \\, E-mail: smb@bioch.ox.ac.uk | WWW: http://www.ocms.ox.ac.uk/~smb/
|____________________________________________________________________________