%0 Journal Article
%T Conformational Proofreading: The Impact of Conformational Changes on the Specificity of Molecular Recognition
%A Yonatan Savir
%A Tsvi Tlusty
%J Quantitative Biology
%D 2010
%I arXiv
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0000468.
%X To perform recognition, molecules must locate and specifically bind their targets within a noisy biochemical environment with many look-alikes. Molecular recognition processes, especially the induced-fit mechanism, are known to involve conformational changes. This arises a basic question: does molecular recognition gain any advantage by such conformational changes? By introducing a simple statistical-mechanics approach, we study the effect of conformation and flexibility on the quality of recognition processes. Our model relates specificity to the conformation of the participant molecules and thus suggests a possible answer: Optimal specificity is achieved when the ligand is slightly off target, that is a conformational mismatch between the ligand and its main target improves the selectivity of the process. This indicates that deformations upon binding serve as a conformational proofreading mechanism, which may be selected for via evolution.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.4457v1