Abstract
How the size and shape of living structures are determined by genetic information is one of the fundamental problems in biology. Here I describe a study in which the size of a biological supramolecular structure was changed in a predictable way by in vitro genetics, with the size both before and after manipulation being exactly determined. I have studied the tail of bacteriophage A, whose length is determined by the length of the 'ruler protein', the product of gene H. The length of the tail can be decreased or increased by deleting the middle part of gene H or by forming a small duplication there, and the length of the tail is proportional to the size of the protein. These results can be regarded as a special case of protein engineering1, namely supramolecular protein engineering.
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Katsura, I. Determination of bacteriophage λ tail length by a protein ruler. Nature 327, 73–75 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1038/327073a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/327073a0
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