AUTHOR=Uhart Marina , Bustos Diego M.
TITLE=Protein intrinsic disorder and network connectivity. The case of 14-3-3 proteins
JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics
VOLUME=Volume 5 - 2014
YEAR=2014
URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2014.00010
DOI=10.3389/fgene.2014.00010
ISSN=1664-8021
ABSTRACT=The understanding of networks is a common goal of an unprecedented array of
traditional disciplines. One of the network properties most influenced by the
structural contents of its nodes is the inter-connectivity. Recent studies in which
structural information was included into the topological analysis of protein
networks revealed that the content of intrinsic disorder in the nodes could
modulate the network topology, rewire networks and change their inter-
connectivity, which is defined by its clustering coefficient. Here, we review the
role of intrinsic disorder present in the partners of the highly conserved 14-3-3
protein family on its interaction networks. The 14-3-3s are phospho-
serine/threonine binding proteins that have strong influence in the regulation of
metabolism and signal transduction networks. Intrinsic disorder increases the
clustering coefficients, namely the inter-connectivity of the nodes within each
14-3-3 paralog networks. We also review two new ideas to measure intrinsic
disorder independently of the primary sequence of proteins, a thermodynamic
model and a method that uses protein structures and their solvent
environment. This new methods could be useful to explain unsolved questions
about versatility and fixation of intrinsic disorder through evolution. The
relation between the intrinsic disorder and network topologies could be an
interesting model to investigate new implicitness of the graph theory into
biology.