Protein ligands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In biochemistry, a protein ligand is an atom, a molecule or an ion which can bind to a specific site (the binding site) on a protein. Interactions between any protein and its ligands are fundamental and essential for the protein to function properly.
Main methods to study protein-ligand interactions are principal hydrodynamic and calorimetric techniques, and principal spectroscopic and structural methods such as
- Fourier transform spectroscopy
- Raman spectroscopy
- fluorescence spectroscopy
- Circular dichroism
- Nuclear magnetic resonance
- Mass spectrometry
- Atomic force microscope
- paramagnetic probes
The dramatically increased computing power of supercomputers and personal computers has made it possible to study protein-ligand interactions also by means of computational chemistry. For example, a worldwide grid of well over a million ordinary PCs has been harnessed for cancer research (see http://www.grid.org)
