J Integr Plant Biol. ›› 2002, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (10): 1155-1159.

• Research Articles •

### Modeling the Cysteine Rich Domain of Plant Metallothionein-like Protein

HE Hong-Zhen, ZHU Chun-Ming, L|B Tun, ZHANG Ri-Qing, ZHAO Nan-Ming and LIU Jin-Yuan

• Published:2002-10-21

Abstract:

With the progress of plant genome research, more than 50 plant metallothionein like (MT-L) genes have been found, but only several MT-L proteins have been detected and no experimental structural information for MT-L proteins has been reported so far. Since detailed knowledge of the protein tertiary structure is required to understand its biological function, a method is needed to determine the structure of these proteins. In this study, the structural data of known mammal MT was used to determine the interatomic distance constraints of the CXC and CXXC motifs and the metal sulfur chelating cluster. Then several possible MT conformations were predicted using a distance geometry algorithm. The statistical analysis was used to select those with much lower target function values and lower conformation energies as the predicted tertiary structural models of the cysteine rich (CR) domains of these proteins. A suitable prediction method for modeling the CR domain of the plant MT-L protein was constructed. The accurately predicted result for the known structure of an MT protein from blue crab suggests that this method is practicable. The tertiary structures of CR domains of rape MT-L protein LSC54 was then modeled with this method.

（清华大学生物科学与技术系，生物膜与膜生物工程国家重点实验室，北京100084）

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