Disulfide by Design™: A computational method for the rational design of disulfide bonds in proteins

Abstract

Summary: Disulfide by Design is a program for the design of novel disulfide bonds in proteins. Protein structure files in PDB format are analyzed to identify residue pairs that are likely to form a disulfide bond if the respective amino acids are mutated to cysteines. The output displays residue pairs having the appropriate geometric characteristics for disulfide formation and provides automated generation of modified PDB files including modeled disulfides. Validation demonstrates a high level of accuracy for the algorithm.