Structural Biology of Protein

Dear Colleagues,

It is a pleasure to invite authors to submit a manuscript to this Special Issue, concerning the “Structural Biology of Protein’’.

The structural characterization of proteins, particularly elucidating the dynamic conformational ensemble, is crucial for understanding protein functionality, insights into their functions, ligand binding, and their role in health, medical research, drug discovery, evolutionary relationship between different proteins, and various biological processes. Protein structures are typically depicted as static, but, in reality, proteins are highly dynamic, interconverting between conformational states and undergoing large-scale conformational changes at different time scales. Predicted structures can offer insights into protein dynamics by modeling various conformations and examining their energy profiles with increasing complexity and flexibility. This can help understand protein folding, allosteric regulation, and other dynamic processes. Given the complex nature of the energy landscape governing protein folding, traditional spectroscopic techniques such as circular dichroism (CD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) are commonly utilized to determine the secondary structure of proteins, biophysical characterization, and molecular stability, and provide subtle cues to fundamental events in protein folding and misfolding patterns at the molecular and structural level. With recent developments in structural biology, biophysical techniques such as small-angle solution X-ray scattering, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), along with the advent of advanced computational methods, have facilitated the integration of computation with experiments to analyze and interpret biomolecular interactions, dynamics, and the relationship to biological processes essential in modern bioinformatics. A combination of multiple techniques in an “integrative structural biology” approach can help overcome the limitations of a single method for protein structure determination.

The Special Issue aims to provide an in-depth overview of the latest biophysical techniques and computational methods for the characterization of proteins at the molecular and structural levels. The tools and techniques specific to studying intrinsically disordered proteins, allosteric regulation in proteins, dynamic conformational ensembles associated with protein folding, structural heterogeneity, aberrant pathways leading to misfolding, post-translational modifications, and combinatorial interactions with multiple protein binding partners will be covered.

I invite investigators to contribute original research presenting novelty, short communications, and reviews that will further the knowledge surrounding these topics.

Dr. Nabanita Saikia
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomolecules is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.