In many cases, understanding their mode of action has been aided by artificially stabilizing one of these states either by designing mutant proteins or by complexation with non-hydrolysable GTP analogues.
Because of inherent disadvantages in these approaches, researchers have developed acryl-bearing GTP and GDP derivatives that can be covalently linked with strategically placed cysteines within the GTPase of interest.
Binding studies with GTPase-interacting proteins and X-ray crystallography analysis demonstrate that the molecular properties of the covalent GTPase–acryl–nucleotide adducts are a faithful reflection of those of the corresponding native states and are advantageously permanently locked in a defined nucleotide (that is active or inactive) state.
In a first application, in vivo experiments using covalently locked Rab5 variants provide new insights into the mechanism of correct intracellular localization of Rab proteins.
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