Shape-shifting proteins and the subtlety in their form and function
Prakash Kulkarni, Supriyo Bhattacharya, Atish Mohanty, Sravani Ramisetty, Evan Pisick, John Orban, Vladimir Uversky, Keith Weninger, Sui Huang, Tsui-Fen Chou, Paul W. Sternberg, Ravi Salgia · 2026
Read Shape-shifting proteins and the subtlety in their form and function by Prakash Kulkarni, Supriyo Bhattacharya, Atish Mohanty, Sravani Ramisetty, Evan Pisick, John Orban, Vladimir Uversky, Keith Weninger, Sui Huang, Tsui-Fen Chou, Paul W. Sternberg, Ravi Salgia (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13577884.txt.
Description
Prakash Kulkarni and co-authors wrote a 2026 essay on proteins that shift shape and still do work. The old rule held that a protein's code fixes one firm shape, and shape fixes its job. A large class breaks that rule: some hold no firm shape at all, and some flip between two shapes with two jobs.
These shifters form a big share of what the team calls the dark proteome, the half of the protein world still dim to us. The essay sorts out four points that are often got wrong. Loose proteins still hold subtle shape leanings, and their flex links to how proteins tune each other. Energy maps can hint at which shapes a loose protein favors. Loose tails also help flip proteins switch. Such flips may act as stored change for evolution.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Prakash Kulkarni, Supriyo Bhattacharya, Atish Mohanty, Sravani Ramisetty, Evan Pisick, John Orban, Vladimir Uversky, Keith Weninger, Sui Huang, Tsui-Fen Chou, Paul W. Sternberg, Ravi Salgia |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 44 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |