A
proteasome is a multi-
protein complex that can digest other proteins into short
polypeptides and
amino acids in an
ATP-driven reaction. The proteasome is hollow, providing an enclosed space for protein digestion, and has openings at two ends to allow entry of the targetted protein.
For a description of the unit S, see Svedberg. For Å, see Angstrom.
26S proteasome
The 26S proteasome is used for the digestion of ubiquitin-marked proteins. It consists of a 19S and a 20S unit. The 20S unit consists of 14 α and 14 β subunits. It is about 150Å long and 115Å wide.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License