Visualizing the binding event

Biologists and biochemists who try to visualize the vast melee of protein interactions inside each cell often find it difficult to imagine how, among all the possible interactions, proteins actually find and bind their specific targets. However, in silico research published last week showed that only a small portion of a protein's three-dimensional structure may be important to consider as an interaction domain.

The finding not only helps reduce the conceptual problem of protein interaction, but also provides a method to identify ligand-binding regions on the surface of proteins with unknown function...