Allostery: An Overview of Its History, Concepts, Methods, and Applications

• Published in: PLoS computational biology Vol. 12; no. 6; p. e1004966
• Main Authors: Liu, Jin, Nussinov, Ruth
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 01-06-2016; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Allosteric Regulation; Biochemistry - history; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomedical research; Biomedical Research - history; Computational biology; Crystal structure; Crystallography; Disease; Evolution; Funding; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Kinases; Medicine and Health Sciences; Models, Biological; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Physical Sciences; Proteins; R&D; Research & development; Research and analysis methods; Studies; United States
• ISSN: 1553-7358; 1553-734X; 1553-7358
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004966

The concept of allostery has evolved in the past century. In this Editorial, we briefly overview the history of allostery, from the pre-allostery nomenclature era starting with the Bohr effect (1904) to the birth of allostery by Monod and Jacob (1961). We describe the evolution of the allostery concept, from a conformational change in a two-state model (1965, 1966) to dynamic allostery in the ensemble model (1999); from multi-subunit (1965) proteins to all proteins (2004). We highlight the current available methods to study allostery and their applications in studies of conformational mechanisms, disease, and allosteric drug discovery. We outline the challenges and future directions that we foresee. Altogether, this Editorial narrates the history of this fundamental concept in the life sciences, its significance, methodologies to detect and predict it, and its application in a broad range of living systems.