Molecular modeling of prohibitin domains

Abstract

Prohibitins comprise a family of highly conserved ubiquitous eukaryotic proteins that mainly localize to the mitochondria. They have been implicated in important cellular processes such as cellular signaling and transcriptional control, apoptosis, cellular senescence, and mitochondrial biogenesis. Using molecular modeling techniques, we have generated structural models of human prohibitins BAP32 and BAP37, which have previously been shown to exist as large ringlike oligomers in the membrane-bound state. The middle domain of prohibitins is evolutionary conserved in the family of SPFH (PHB) domain proteins. On the basis of the known structure of flotillin-2, another member of the SPFH-domain f..