TY - JOUR AU - Brewster, Aaron S. AU - Slaymaker, Ian M. AU - Afif, Samir A. AU - Chen, Xiaojiang S. PY - 2010 DA - 2010/08/18 TI - Mutational analysis of an archaeal minichromosome maintenance protein exterior hairpin reveals critical residues for helicase activity and DNA binding JO - BMC Molecular Biology SP - 62 VL - 11 IS - 1 AB - The mini-chromosome maintenance protein (MCM) complex is an essential replicative helicase for DNA replication in Archaea and Eukaryotes. While the eukaryotic complex consists of six homologous proteins (MCM2-7), the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus has only one MCM protein (ssoMCM), six subunits of which form a homohexamer. We have recently reported a 4.35Å crystal structure of the near full-length ssoMCM. The structure reveals a total of four β-hairpins per subunit, three of which are located within the main channel or side channels of the ssoMCM hexamer model generated based on the symmetry of the N-terminal Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus (mtMCM) structure. The fourth β-hairpin, however, is located on the exterior of the hexamer, near the exit of the putative side channels and next to the ATP binding pocket. SN - 1471-2199 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2199-11-62 DO - 10.1186/1471-2199-11-62 ID - Brewster2010 ER -