Structure
The main feature of the leucine zipper domain is the predominance of the common amino acid leucine at the d position of the heptad repeat. Leucine zippers were first identified by sequence alignment of certain transcription factors that identified a common pattern of leucines every seven amino acids. These leucines were later shown to form the hydrophobic core of a coiled coil.
Each half of a leucine zipper consists of a short alpha-helix with a leucine residue at every seventh position. The standard 3.6-residues-per-turn alpha-helix structure changes slightly to become a 3.5-residues-per-turn alpha-helix. Known also as the heptad repeat, one leucine comes in direct contact with another leucine on the other strand every second turn.
The bZIP family of transcription factors consists of a basic region that interacts with the major groove of a DNA molecule through hydrogen bonding, and a hydrophobic leucine zipper region that is responsible for dimerization.
Read more about this topic: Leucine Zipper
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I’m a Sunday School teacher, and I’ve always known that the structure of law is founded on the Christian ethic that you shall love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself—a very high and perfect standard. We all know the fallibility of man, and the contentions in society, as described by Reinhold Niebuhr and many others, don’t permit us to achieve perfection.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other “isms,” it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)