Calcium-saturated calmodulin (CaM) binds and influences the activity of a varied collection of target proteins in most cells. This promiscuity underlies CaM's role as a shared participant in calciumdependent signal transduction pathways, but imposes a handicap on popular CaM-based calcium biosensors, which display an undesired tendency to cross-react with cellular proteins. Designed CaM/ target pairs that retain high affinity for one another, but lack affinity for wild-type CaM and its natural interaction partners, would therefore be useful as sensor components, and possibly also as elements of "synthetic" cellular signaling networks. Here we have adopted a rational approach to creating suitably modified CaM/target complexes by using computational design methods to guide parallel site-directed mutagenesis of both binding partners. A hierarchical design procedure was applied to suggest a small number of complementary mutations on CaM and on a peptide ligand derived from skeletal muscle light chain kinase (M13). Experimental analysis showed that the procedure was successful in identifying CaM and M13 mutants with novel specificity for one another. Importantly, the designed complexes retained affinity comparable to the wild-type CaM/M13 complex. These results represent a step toward the creation of CaM and M13 derivatives with specificity fully orthogonal to the wild-type proteins, and show that qualitatively accurate predictions may be obtained from computational methods applied simultaneously to two proteins involved in multiple linked binding equilibria. Figure 1A). (2,3) Calcium-loaded CaM binds to isolated target sequences with affinity comparable to its complexes with the intact proteins, and with dissociation constants often in the nanomolar range. With few exceptions, CaM ligands tend to be highly basic, presenting lysine and arginine residues that form salt-bridge networks with negatively-charged and polar amino-acid side chains bordering the binding cleft on CaM ( Figure 1B). In addition, many CaM targets appear to be anchored by a key pair of bulky groups spaced apart by 2.5 or 3.5 helical turns. (4) Deletion or mutation of these anchor residues dramatically reduces CaMbinding affinity. (5,6) Considerable interest in CaM/peptide interactions has revolved around potential applications in biotechnology. CaM-affinity chromatography (7) The ability to understand and control determinants of binding specificity at the CaM/target interface is important both for biotechnological applications and for appreciation of how CaM transduces metabolic signals via multiple protein interaction networks. Many studies have probed the contributions of both the charged and hydrophobic anchor residues to CaM binding affinity, (5,6,(19)(20)(21)(22)) but relatively few have sought to manipulate specificity through purposeful mutagenesis of one or both binding partners. A step in this direction was taken by Mayo and colleagues,(23,24) and involved the integration of computational and experimental methods to bias CaM spe...