Supra-domains - evolutionary units larger than single protein domains

Christine Vogel¹ *,Carlo Berzuini², Matthew Bashton¹, Julian Gough³, Sarah A. Teichmann<sup>1

1</sup>MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, UK; ²MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, CB2 2QH, UK; ³Genome Exploration Research Group, RIKEN Genomic Sciences Centre, W121 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ki, Yokohama 230-0045, Japan, and Department of Structural Biology, Fairchild bldg, D109, Stanford, CA 94305-5126, USA..

EXAMPLE

Supra-domain in Translation Factors: the "P-loop containing nucleotide trphosphate hydrolases" domain and the "Translation proteins" domain. This supra-domain occurs in prokaryotic and eukaryotic translation factors that hydrolyse GTP. GTP hydrolysis in the P-loop domain drives the conformational change in the Translation proteins domain, which is then transmitted onto the ribosome. The supra-domain occurs in 35 different domain architectures, and five of these are given here. The inset shows a protein of known structure, which contains the supra-domain (PDB: 1jny) (Vitagliano et al., 2001)