What's in an Average? An Ensemble View of Phosphorylation Effects

Abstract

The number of examples of functional post-translational modulation of disordered proteins rapidly grows. In a recent issue of Structure, Jie et al. (2017) show that phosphorylation of dynein intermediate chain alters partner binding but retains its dynamic, disorder character. An ensemble model offers an organizing framework to relate function, conformation, and phosphorylation in disordered and ordered proteins alike.