Protein Flexibility Reduces Solvent-Mediated Friction Barriers of Ligand Binding to a Hydrophobic Surface Patch

Solvent fluctuations have been explored in detail for idealized and rigid hydrophobic model systems, but so far it has remained unclear how internal protein motions and their coupling to the...

Switchable inteins for conditional protein splicing

Synthetic biologists aim at engineering controllable biological parts such as DNA, RNA and proteins in order to steer biological activities using external inputs. Proteins can be controlled in several ways, for instance by regulating the expression of their encoding genes with small molecules or light. However, post-translationally modifying pre-existing proteins to regulate their function or localization leads to faster responses. Conditional splicing of internal protein domains, termed inteins, is an attractive methodology for this purpose. Here we discuss methods to control intein activity with a focus on those compatible with applications in living cells.