Protein-protein association: from biophysical understanding to protein design

The process of protein-protein interactions can be divided into two kinetic, physically different processes. The first is the association process, where two proteins located far away have to find each other in a short time and form a complex. This process is second order, and depends on the concentration of the two reactants. The second process is of the dissociation of the two proteins, to form monomers. This process is independent on the protein concentration, and thus is of first order. Both processes were thoroughly investigated in our laboratory. In the following part, is a description of what we learned concerning the biophysical basis of the binding process, and how it was applied for protein design of faster and tighter binding protein complexes using the computer program PARE. Click here for a detailed description of our work in this area.