Interesting article. I hadn't really heard of the term "disordered protein"
Though reading the linked paper[1] gave me a more concise definition:
>Intrinsically disordered or unstructured proteins (IDPs) exist as highly flexible polypeptide chains in vivo behaving as an ensemble of conformational states with no stable tertiary structure
To me this suggests "disordered" is as poor a name as "junk" was for DNA. Rather these are just proteins that don't have a fixed tertiary structure.
And that changing shapes doesn't need to reflect "disorder", rather it sounds like it more likely allows the proteins to function in more complex, dynamics ways. So something like "dynamic" might be a better term to me.
Typical case of humans labeling something they don't understand easily as worthless.
disordered as in not having order, rather than abnormal.
marojejian•6mo ago
Yes, "not having order" was the definition I was using. And that definition implies "high entropy" where the many micro-states each are equivalent in function.
But it sounds like the evidence suggests the opposite: the many conformations we see these proteins taking in different contexts serve a function. The proteins are more like machines with moving parts, vs. static legos.
marojejian•6mo ago
Though reading the linked paper[1] gave me a more concise definition:
>Intrinsically disordered or unstructured proteins (IDPs) exist as highly flexible polypeptide chains in vivo behaving as an ensemble of conformational states with no stable tertiary structure
To me this suggests "disordered" is as poor a name as "junk" was for DNA. Rather these are just proteins that don't have a fixed tertiary structure.
And that changing shapes doesn't need to reflect "disorder", rather it sounds like it more likely allows the proteins to function in more complex, dynamics ways. So something like "dynamic" might be a better term to me.
Typical case of humans labeling something they don't understand easily as worthless.
[1]https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/41/D1/D508/1069637
ecoled_ame•6mo ago
marojejian•6mo ago
But it sounds like the evidence suggests the opposite: the many conformations we see these proteins taking in different contexts serve a function. The proteins are more like machines with moving parts, vs. static legos.