UM Team Reports Major Breakthrough In Protein Study
COLLEGE PARK, Md. A
team of researchers at the Uni
versity of Maryland has observed
for the first time how some pro
teins, the chains of amino acids
that control every function in liv
ing cells, come together in a step
wise manner. What they saw
may totally change the way sci
entists look at proteins.
As reported in the Dec. 13
issue of the journal Science, the
Maryland team saw a protein
take shape, a process called fold
ing, in a series of steps, not one
sudden motion, as had long been
assumed to be the folding pro
cess.
“It’s been thought that pro
teins had only two states, like an
on-off switch,” said Victor
Munoz, the Maryland biochem
istry professor who led the re
search. “Our discovery showed
that there are proteins that act
more like rheostats, gradually
folding and unfolding.”
The discovery could lead to a
better understanding of how pro-
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teins assemble and work with
each other and even give scien
tists tools to predict how proteins
will act. “We know proteins fold
spontaneously, without help from
anything else, but we don’t know
the rules of how they do it. We
may now be able to learn what
some of those rules are,” Munoz
said.
“Like fuzzy logic’s gray areas,
or the potential power of quan
tum computers, these molecular
rheostats go beyond traditional
protein binary switches and un
ravel a whole new set of commu
nication tools between proteins
that might be critical for the reg
ulation of complex networks.”
The study of proteins has
taken on new importance since
the sequencing of the human gen
ome. “The genome sequence tells
us only what the sequence of the
proteins will be,” said Munoz.
“DNA stores that information,
but proteins do all the work in
the cell. They are the nanoma
chines that perform most of the
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body’s critical functions. They
are the cell's policemen, firefight
ers, chemical factories, road
builders and communication en
gineers.
“Proteins synchronize with
each other into networks that re
sult in complex cellular re
sponses, like their response to
hormones or other stimuli. It is in
the way we understand how pro
teins talk to each other that our
discovery may also have very im
portant repercussions.” The key
to the Maryland team’s discovery
was their combination of theory,
detailed experimentation and
computer modeling, “The protein
energy landscape theory pre
dicted more than 10 years ago
that some proteins could fold and
unfold without crossing free ener
gy barriers, the so-called ‘down
hill folding’ process,” said
Munoz, “but it hadn’t been con
firmed experimentally because
people didn’t know how to look
for this behavior.”
Munoz and his team began by
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realizing that downhill folding
should occur by a gradual un
folding process in which the dif
ferent pieces of protein structure
melt bit by bit. They heated a
small protein of the Escherichia
coli bacteria to decrease its stabil
ity at each step of the process.
They then tracked the process
with a combination of biophysical
techniques, each one sensitive to
a different property of the struc
ture of the protein, and analyzed
the data with computer models.
“It is the difference between
just being able to see scattered
car parts jump all at once to
being a complete car and seeing
the car slowly come together in
FB Urges ‘lmmediate Action’
On EU Biotech Ban
WASHINGTON, D.C. The American Farm Bureau Federation
urged President Bush “to take immediate action" to initiate a World
Trade Organization case against the European Union's continuing
moratorium against new appi ovals of biotech crops.
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Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 28, 2002-A27
AFBF President Bob Stallman, in a letter to
Bush signed by the presidents of all the state Farm
Bureaus attending a meeting here, said, “It is im
perative that U.S. agriculture and other countries
around the world understand that your adminis
tration is committed to enforcing the terms of
trade agreements.”
Stallman said the EU’s four-year moratorium
“continues unabated” and that recent actions b>
the EU to enact new biotech regulations have not
addressed U.S. agriculture’s concerns. “The regu
lations as approved by the European Parliament
and European Council are themselves not compli
ant with the WTO rules of international trade,” he
noted. “Replacing one non-WTO compliant action
with another non-WTO compliant solution is not
acceptable.”
He said the EU has acknowledged that the mor
atorium is “not based on scientific evidence” and
that EU regulatory and scientific agencies "have
determined repeatedly” that biotech products
withheld from the European market “are safe for
human consumption and pose no risk to the envi
ronment.”
Stallman said the moratorium “has resulted in
lost export markets for U.S. agricultural pioducers
valued at hundreds of millions of dollars annual
ly.”
Recently, Farm Bureau and 25 other agricultur
al groups urged U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick to go ahead with a WTO dispute set
tlement case. “The EU's ongoing and illegal mora
torium has resulted in lost export markets for U.S.
producers and exporters, a slowdown in the adop
tion of new technologies in the United States and
other countries, and increased production and
testing costs for U.S. agricultural interests,” the
groups noted.
APHIS Declares Great Britain
Free Of FMD, Rinderpest
WASHINGTON, D.C. Great Britain is free
of foot and mouth disease (FMD) and rinderpest,
two diseases that have plagued the country’s live
stock population over the past two years, and is re
lieved of certain FMD-related trade restrictions,
APHIS announced in a final rule published in the
Federal Register.
Great Britain consists of England, Scotland,
Wales, and the Isle of Man.
* <• ,
Great Britain has met the standards of the Of
fice International des Epizootics (OIE) for being
considered free of FMD and can be added to the
list of regions considered free of FMD, APHIS
stated in the final rule. The rule became effective
on Dec. 17, 2002.
Great Britain and Northern Ireland have been
moved to a list denoting that certain restriction
must still apply because of the countries' proximi
ty to or trading relationships with rinderpest- oi
FMD-alfected regions. The change in status re
lieves certain restrictions on the importation ot ru
minants and swine, fresh (chilled or frozen) meat
and other products of ruminants and swine into
the U.S. from Great Britain.
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each step of the assembly line,"
said Munoz. When the Munoz
team began the research, they
were actually examining a differ
ent aspect of proteins. "We were
trying to create a catalog of sim
ple proteins that could be consid
ered as structural archetypes.
This was something of a sur
prise,” said Munoz.
Working with Munoz were
Maria M. Garcia-Mira, until re
cently at the University of Mary
land and now at the University
Bayreuth, Bayreuth. Germany;
Mourad Sadqi and Niels Fischer,
University of Maryland; and Jose
M Sanchez-Ruiz, University of
Granada, Granada, Spain.