{"doi":"10.17615/bqs6-cz47","title":"Conservation of Side-Chain Dynamics Within a Protein Family","abstract":"The question of protein dynamics and its relevance to function is currently a topic of great interest. Proteins are particularly dynamic at the side-chain level on the timescale of picoseconds to nanoseconds. Here, we present a comparison of NMR-monitored side-chain motion between three PDZ domains of ∼30% sequence identity and show that the side-chain dynamics display non-trivial conservation. Methyl 2H relaxation was carried out to determine side-chain order parameters (S2), which were found to be more similar than naively expected from sequence, local packing, or a combination of the two. Thus, the dynamics of a rather distant homolog appears to be an excellent predictor of a protein's side-chain dynamics, and, on average, better than current structure-based methods. Fast side-chain dynamics therefore display a high level of organization associated with global fold. Beyond simple conservation, the analysis herein suggests that the pattern of side-chain flexibility has significant contributions from non-local elements of the PDZ fold, such as correlated motions, and that the conserved dynamics may directly support function.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":143491,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9557,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":49077,"name":"Ernesto J. Fuentes","orcid":"0000-0001-5812-8187","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":611643,"name":"Anthony B. Law","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":149321,"name":"Andrew L. Lee","orcid":"0000-0003-2783-1907","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:17:38.432803Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}