Fig. 2.

The dock-and-coalesce mechanism for the binding of an intrinsically disordered protein to a structured target. In the docking step, a segment (blue) docks to its cognate subsite to form a docked complex. The docking rate can be significantly accelerated by long-range electrostatic attraction between the docking segment and the target surface. Note that an extended charge surface (red) of the target may contribute to the electrostatic attraction. In the subsequent coalescing step, additional segments (yellow and green), guided by local interactions with the target surface, form native structures within their own subsites.