Cystine knot

A cystine knot is a protein structural motif containing three disulfide bridges (formed from pairs of cysteine residues). The sections of polypeptide that occur between two of them form a loop through which a third disulfide bond passes, forming a rotaxane substructure. It occurs in many proteins across many species and provides considerable structural stability. There are three types of cystine knot, which differ in the topology of the disulfide bonds: