Debunked dogma: disordered proteins disregard ligands’ chirality

The sophisticated chiral structures of proteins usually mean they can only interact with ligands with a complementary chirality. Now, researchers have observed that disorganised proteins and peptides have identical interactions with strings of L- and D-amino acids, which could have implications in drug discovery and help to uncover the causes of chirality on early Earth. ‘It is possible for a [disordered] protein to interact with its ligand regardless of its chirality,’ explains co-first author Estella Newcombe from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.