Transformer molecules (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 01, 2012, 15:41 (4376 days ago)

Changing an enzyme from one function to another by phosphorylation:-"However, this essential part of the protein-making machine did not stop evolving. Now, in a new study published by the journal Molecular Cell, Guo, Ehud Razin of The Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada, and a large team of international scientists have shown that this enzyme can actually also work in another fundamental process in humans. In this case, the enzyme activates a process that creates a copy of RNA from DNA — transcription, which is the first step leading to gene expression. All this takes is a single chemical alteration (phosphorylation) at a specific site on the enzyme, which then triggers a cascade of structure changes, freeing the enzyme from translation to another role — that is, regulating transcription. 
"If you think about the structural changes that occur in the synthetase we looked at in the study, it's very much like the movie Transformers," Guo says. "It's a machine that changes structure and turns into another machine that can accomplish a completely different task—like from a car to a giant robot. This is the first time anyone has been able to show how you can change the function of this enzyme from a mechanistic perspective, to know exactly how that works."-http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/11/transformer-enzyme-can-change-function-purpose-Enzymes are giant protein molecules. How did evolution figure out just where to place the phosphorus in just one tiny spot to completely change the function of the enzyme? This is just the beginning of the discovery of the underlying complexity of genome function. The end point will be to recognize the complezxity is way beyond chance. God, anyone?