Protein Binding Interfaces and Their Binding Hot Spot Prediction: A Survey

Abstract

In living organisms, genes are the blueprints or library, specifying instructions for building proteins. Proteins constitute the bulk of cells. Proteins mutual binding and interactions play a vital role in numerous functions and activities, such as signal transduction, enzymatic reactions, immunoreactions and inter-cellular communications. This survey provides basic knowledge of proteins and protein binding. First, we describe proteins' fundamental elements, structures and functions. In Sect. 5.2, we present concepts related to protein binding and interactions. In Sect. 5.3, we explain why protein binding interfaces have a uneven distribution of binding free energy. In the Sects. 5.4 and 5.5, we explain why protein interfaces are complicated and how the current studies deal with this difficult problem. In Sect. 5.6, we present an overview on methods to model and predict binding free energy of protein interactions. Section 5.7 concludes this survey with a summary.