Abstract

Calmodulin plays a role in several life processes, its flexibility allows binding of a number of different ligands from small molecules to amphiphilic peptide helices and proteins. Through the diversity of its functions, it is quite difficult to find new drugs, which bind to calmodulin as a target. We present available structural information on the protein, obtained by X-ray diffraction, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and molecular modeling and try to derive some conclusions on structure-activity relationships.

Keywords: Calmodulin, protein interactions, small molecule binding, hydrophobicity, amphiphilicity, drug design