An information theoretic approach is used to examine the magnitude and origin of associations among amino acid sites in the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) family of transcription factors. Entropy and mutual information values are used to summarize the variability and covariability of amino acids comprising the bHLH domain for 242 sequences. When these quantitative measures are integrated with cr...

Robust methods to detect DNA-binding proteins from structures of unknown function are important for structural biology. This paper describes a method for identifying such proteins that (i) have a solvent accessible structural motif necessary for DNA-binding and (ii) a positive electrostatic potential in the region of the binding region. We focus on three structural motifs: helix-turn-helix (HTH...

HISTORY ......... .............................................................................................................. 97 A Thermodynamic Model of a-Helix Formation ....................................................... 97 Statistical Mechanical Models of a-Helix Formation................................................ 98 Tests of Helix-Coil Theory and Values for Parameters ...........

There is much activity directed at quantifying the contribution of specific interactions to the stabilization of protein structure. The paper by Myers et al. (1) in this issue of the Proceedings addresses a central and much studied issue: The experimental measure of the intrinsic a-helix forming propensities of the amino acids. What is an intrinsic a-helix forming propensity? The idea that the ...

Plant growth is regulated by a multiplicity of factors, many of which are transduced via hormone signaling. However, how these hormone signals converge to affect growth is not entirely clear (reviewed in Depuydt and Hardtke, 2011). New work from Ikeda et al. (2012) and Bai et al. (2012) demonstrates that the cell elongation component of growth is regulated by a mechanism involving groups of thr...