STABILIZING PROTEINS FOR USE IN PERSONAL CARE, COSMETIC, AND PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS

摘要

Several secreted proteases (Figure 5) are produced with dedicated single-turnover intramolecular chaperones (IMC) or propeptides. Protease maturation necessitates IMCs to switch from a chaperone to a protease inhibitor and subsequently into a proteolytic substrate. The present invention provides compositions and methods using environmental signals to modulate the stochastic behavior associated with the inhibitor-substrate switch between infinitely probabilistic and precisely deterministic temporal events. This provides a unique biological switch that enable proteases to function as biochemical regulators through modulation of conformational entropy of their cognate IMCs. The present invention provides compositions comprising proteases that are stabilized as inactive proteases, but that can yet be rapidly activated by external signals (Figure 4).