Protein Kinase Structure and Function

This lecture will review the history of protein phosphorylation and then will describe the critical features of active protein kinases. cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA), discovered in 1968 and crystallized in 1991, serves as a prototype for understanding the structure, function, and regulation of this enzyme family as well as its evolution from prokaryotic kinases. In addition to describing the functional motifs that are embedded within the conserved protein kinase core, the overall architecture of the protein will be described as well as the complex and dynamic mechanism for regulating the kinase conformation by phosphorylation.