MoRFs

Molecular Recognition Features (MoRFs) are small (10-70 residues) intrinsically disordered regions in proteins that undergo a disorder-to-order transition upon binding to their partners. MoRFs are implicated in protein-protein interactions, which serve as the initial step in molecular recognition. MoRFs are disordered prior binding to their partners, whereas they form a common 3D structure after interacting with their partners.^[1][2]

Amino Acid composition

Their amino acid composition is very interesting. They look like disordered proteins, but they have some characteristics of ordered proteins.^[2]

Categorization

MoRFs can be separated in 4 categories according to the shape they form once bound to their partners.^[2]

The categories are:

• α-MoRFs (when they form alpha-helixes)
• β-MoRFs (when they form beta-sheets)
• irregular-MoRFs (when they don't form any shape)
• complex-MoRFs (combination of the above categories)

MoRFs Predictors

MoRFPred^[3] ANCHOR^[4] MoRFchibi SYSTEM^[5][6]

Databases

mpMoRFsDB^[7]

References

1. Robin van der Lee, Marija Buljan, Benjamin Lang, Robert J. Weatheritt, Gary W. Daughdrill, A. Keith Dunker, Monika Fuxreiter, Julian Gough, Joerg Gsponer, David T. Jones, Philip M. Kim, Richard W. Kriwacki, Christopher J. Oldfield, Rohit V. Pappu, Peter Tompa, Vladimir N. Uversky, Peter E. Wright, and M. Madan Babu (July 2014). "Classification of intrinsically disordered regions and proteins". Chem Rev. 114(13):6589–631 114: 6589–631. doi:10.1021/cr400525m. PMID 24773235.
2. Amrita Mohan, Christopher J. Oldfield, Predrag Radivojac, Vladimir Vacic, Marc S. Cortese, A. Keith Dunker, Vladimir N. Uversky. "Analysis of Molecular Recognition Features (MoRFs)". Journal of Molecular Biology 2006 Oct 6. 362(5): 1043–59. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2006.07.087. PMID 16935303.
3. Disfani FM, Hsu WL, Mizianty MJ, Oldfield CJ, Xue B, Dunker AK, Uversky VN, Kurgan L. (Jun 2012). "MoRFpred, a computational tool for sequence-based prediction and characterization of short disorder-to-order transitioning binding regions in proteins". Bioinformatics. 2012 Jun 15;28(12). doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bts209. PMID 22689782.
4. Bálint Mészáros, István Simon, Zsuzsanna Dosztányi (May 2009). "Prediction of protein binding regions in disordered proteins". PLoS Comput Biol. 2009 May;5(5):e1000376. PMID 19412530.
5. Nawar Malhis and Joerg Gsponer (Jan 2015). "Computational Identification of MoRFs in Protein Sequences". Bioinformatics (2015) 31 (11): 1738-1744: 1738–44. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btv060. PMID 25637562.
6. Nawar Malhis, Eric TC Wong, Roy Nassar, Joerg Gsponer (October 2015). "Computational Identification of MoRFs in Protein Sequences Using Hierarchical Application of Bayes Rule". PLoS One. 2015 Oct 30;10(10):e0141603. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0141603. PMID 26517836.
7. Foivos Gypas, Georgios N Tsaousis and Stavros J Hamodrakas (July 26, 2013). "mpMoRFsDB: A database of Molecular Recognition Features in Membrane Proteins". Bioinformatics. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btt427. PMID 23894139.