title: β-trefoil inhibitors--from the work of Kunitz onward.
abstract: Protein protease inhibitors are the tools of nature in controlling proteolytic enzymes. They come in different shapes and sizes. The β-trefoil protease inhibitors that come from plants, first discovered by Kunitz, were later complemented with representatives from higher fungi. They inhibit serine (families S1 and S8) and cysteine proteases (families C1 and C13) as well as other hydrolases. Their versatility is the result of the plasticity of the loops coming out of the stable β-trefoil scaffold. For this reason, they display several different mechanisms of inhibition involving different positions of the loops and their combinations. Natural diversity, as well as the initial successes in de novo protein engineering, makes the β-trefoil proteins a promising starting point for the generation of strong, specific, multitarget inhibitors capable of inhibiting multiple types of hydrolytic enzymes and simultaneously interacting with different protein, carbohydrate, or DNA molecules. This pool of knowledge opens up new possibilities for the exploration of their naturally occurring as well as modified properties for applications in many fields of medicine, biotechnology, and agriculture.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Structural Biology, Jozef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Miha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Renko
authors.forename: Jerica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sabotič
authors.forename: Dušan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Turk
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010447:Peptide Hydrolases / Q000378:metabolism*; D011480:Protease Inhibitors / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary
chemical_list: D011480:Protease Inhibitors; D010447:Peptide Hydrolases