Epic Quest Bio The case files
Case No. 105 · the exotic forty · have you seen this molecule?

Knotted protein UU089.1

a seven-crossing protein knot

File sealed

The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.

Booking photographs

Knotted protein UU089.1, front view, against a height chart in nanometers
FRONT
Knotted protein UU089.1, side view
SIDE · PDB 8W68

The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 0.1 nm. About 30,000, stacked, would span a human hair. Mugshot: the bare chain, so you can follow the knot.

Rap sheet

Answers to
Q9PR55. No known job.
Height
2.8 nm bare, as drawn. 4.1 nm dressed.
Weight
17 zeptograms
Crossings
Seven: a 71 knot. A cousin ties five, on AlphaFold’s word.
Build
A twisted barrel. Five phenylalanines stick out like a star.
Habits
Shrugs off 7.2 M urea. Resists ClpXP.
First seen
In a computer: AlphaFold called the knot. Crystals agreed to 0.36 Å.
Status
Former record holder. Beaten by an eight-crossing knot five times longer.
Last seen
In a 2.3 Å crystal, eight to the asymmetric unit, in a lab in Taipei.
7

crossings in one chain of 89 amino acids. Nobody tied it.
You’ve never seen one.

CASE FILE: Hsu, M.-F. et al. (2024) Structure, dynamics, and stability of the smallest and most complex 71 protein knot. J. Biol. Chem. 300, 105553.

The poster on the street

The wanted poster for Knotted protein UU089.1

This is the photocopied wanted poster for Knotted protein UU089.1, No. 105 of the exotic forty. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.

Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.

Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.