Polyglutamine tract binding protein-1 is an intrinsically unstructured protein

Polyglutamine tract binding protein-1 (PQBP-1) is a nuclear protein that interacts with disease proteins containing expanded polyglutamine repeats. PQBP-1 also interacts with RNA polymerase II and a spliceosomal protein U5-15kD. In the present study, we demonstrate that PQBP-1 is composed of a large unstructured region and a small folded core. Intriguingly, the large unstructured region encompasses two functional domains: a polar amino acid rich domain and a C-terminal domain. These findings suggest that PQBP-1 belongs to the family of intrinsically unstructured/disordered proteins. Furthermore, the binding of the target molecule U5-15kD induces only minor conformational changes into PQBP-1. Our results suggest that PQBP-1 includes high content of unstructured regions in the C-terminal domain, in spite of the binding of U5-15kD.