A pre-structured helix in the intrinsically disordered 4EBP1

Abstract

The eIF4E-binding protein 1 (4EBP1) has long been known to be completely unstructured without any secondary structures, which contributed significantly to the proposal of the induced fit mechanism for target binding of intrinsically disordered proteins. We show here that 4EBP1 is not completely unstructured, but contains a pre-structured helix.