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Crystal structures of Limulus SAP-like pentraxin reveal two molecular aggregations.

Following on from our discovery of SAP in Limulus, this joint work with California Davis and Woods Hole describes the only non-human pentraxin structure determined. The findings impact not only on our understanding of immune system evolution, but also on bioinformatics and the rapidly expanding area of establishing structure and function from sequence. A remarkable and novel “topological” conservation of key side chain positions is identified, with function determined by variation and conservation in key structural rather than sequence locations. Simple sequence comparison thus needs to be combined with structural insight for successful prediction.