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Conformational and connotational heterogeneity: A surprising relationship between protein structural flexibility and puns
Author(s) -
Keedy Daniel A.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
proteins: structure, function, and bioinformatics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.699
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0134
pISSN - 0887-3585
DOI - 10.1002/prot.24765
Subject(s) - ambiguity , flexibility (engineering) , rhetorical question , linguistics , meaning (existential) , phrase , pun , computer science , word (group theory) , chemistry , philosophy , epistemology , mathematics , statistics
Protein structures are often thought of as static objects, and indeed, the bulk of a protein's sequence forms α‐helices, β‐sheets, and other generally well‐ordered substructures. These portions of the molecule pre‐pay the entropic price of maintaining a globally unique fold, freeing other regions to adopt multiple alternative conformations. In many cases, this localized flexibility is biologically interesting: it may be important for catalytic turnover or for conformational selection before forming an intermolecular complex, for example. Similarly, most of written language is carefully tuned to avoid ambiguity and convey a singular meaning, a cohesive message. This linguistic scaffolding in some sense pre‐pays a rhetorical price, paving the way for punctuated instances in which a given word or phrase can simultaneously adopt multiple alternative connotations—in other words, for puns. Proteins 2015; 83:797–798. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.