Tags: Protein.
The cystatins are a family of cysteine protease inhibitors which share a sequence homology and a common tertiary structure of an alpha helix lying on top of an anti-parallel beta strand. The family is subdivided as described below.Cystatins show similarity to fetuins kininogens histidine-rich glycoproteins and cystatin-related proteins.Cystatins mainly inhibit peptidase enzymes (another term for proteases) belonging to peptidase families C1 (papain family) and C13 (legumain family).
