Protein Fusion Strategies for Membrane Protein Stabilization and Crystal Structure Determination

Crystal structures of membrane proteins are highly desired for their use in the mechanistic understanding functions and designing new drugs. However, obtaining protein is difficult. One way to overcome this challenge with fusion methods, which have been successfully used determine many proteins, including receptors, enzymes adhesion molecules. Existing strategies can be categorized into N or C terminal fusion, insertion termini restraining. The fusions facilitate expression, purification, crystallization phase determination. Successful applications often require further optimization linkers interactions, whose design facilitated by a shared helix strategy AlphaFold prediction future.