Benavides, T. L.; Ramelot, T. A.; Montelione, G. T.

While allosteric protein function has been appreciated for decades, the ubiquity of conformational shifts, particularly those distant from the interaction interface, has not been broadly characterized. For example, ligand binding frequently triggers allosteric effects far from the interaction interface, yet the prevalence of these conformational shifts underpinning protein function remain poorly documented. We systematically assessed the generality of allosteric effects as monitored by NMR Chemical Shift Perturbations (CSPs) distant from the interaction interface. In a set of 139 protein-protein complexes, a striking 74% of all significant CSPs are non-local to the binding site. Notably, more than 35% of significant CSPs outside the binding site occur in residues for which the shortest receptor-ligand interatomic distance is more than 10 [A]. Every protein analyzed exhibits a significant fraction (> 8%) of CSPs distant from the binding site. This analysis across a large number of protein structures demonstrates and documents that structural plasticity is a ubiquitous and fundamental property of proteins.