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Quaternary structure

المؤلف:  ..................

المصدر:  LibreTexts Project

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16-12-2019

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Quaternary structure
While a protein's secondary and tertiary structure is defined by how the protein chain folds together, quaternary structure is defined by how two or more folded protein chains come together to form a 'superstructure'. Many proteins consist of only one protein chain, or subunit, and thus have no quaternary structure. Many other proteins consist of two identical subunits (these are called homodimers) or two non-identical subunits (these are called heterodimers).

Quaternary structures can be quite elaborate: below we see a protein whose quaternary structure is defined by ten identical subunits arranged in two five-membered rings, forming what can be visualized as a 'double donut' shape (this is fructose 1,6-bisphosphate aldolase):