Feature Chemistry

Disorder at Work

Proteins without a definite shape can still take on important jobs

By Tanya Lewis

- More than 2 years ago

Richard Kriwacki refused to give up on his protein. He had tried again and again to determine its three-dimensional shape, but in every experiment, the protein looked no more structured than a piece of cooked spaghetti.

In its unbound state, some parts of the p53 protein take on a definite structure (gray model) while other regions remain flexible and disordered (other colors).