Typical 2-cys Peroxiredoxin: applications of a morpheein in bionanotechnology

Advances in biochemistry have shed light on proteins that defy the dogma “one sequence, one structure, one function”, i e chameleonic proteins, intrinsically disordered proteins, metamorphic proteins and morpheeins These biomolecules fold into multiple secondary and tertiary structures and as morpheeins self assemble into several quaternary complexes starting from a single protomer (Jaffe 2005 The morpheein complexes have distinct activities correlated to the exposure of hidden surfaces and associated with recognition of new ligands this behavior can be a stratagem adopted by nature to generate new protein functions or tune pre existing ones by changing the oligomeric state Furthermore, the equilibrium between the oligomers is tuned by temperature, pH, ionic strength, and redox potential as well as single point mutations, encouraging their use as supramolecular templates and scaffolds in bionanotechnology In this context, Peroxiredoxins Prxs represent the paradigm of a morpheein protein that can be applied to bionanotechnology (Ardini et al 2021).