Structure of RNase A |PDB structures||RCSB PDB PDBe PDBsum|
|Gene Ontology||AmiGO / EGO| The importance of bovine pancreatic
RNase A was secured when the Armour & Co. (of hot dog fame)
purified a kilogram of it, and gave 10 mg samples away free to
any interested scientists. The ability to have a single lot of
purified enzyme instantly made RNase a predominant model system
for protein studies. RNase A was the model protein used to work
out many spectroscopic methods for assaying protein structure,
including absorbance, circular dichroism/optical rotary
dispersion, Raman, EPR and NMR spectroscopy. RNase A was also
the first model protein for the development of several chemical
structural methods, such as limited proteolysis of disordered
segments, chemical modification of exposed side chains, and
antigenic recognition. RNase A was the first enzyme for which a
correct catalytic mechanism was proposed, even before its
structure was known. Studies of the oxidative folding of RNase A
led Chris Anfinsen to enunciate