Topic
Field studying the three-dimensional architecture of proteins and protein complexes to explain how they function at the molecular level.
Stephen Harrison's Harvard lab imaged a rotavirus breaking into a cell and found that VP7, not the protein he expected, forms the pore that releases its genome. The team reported the mechanism Sept. 10 in Science, and Harrison sees it as a lead on delivering large gene therapies into cells.
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EMBL researchers report in two Cell papers that 3D imaging of frozen bacteria catches protein production coupled to transcription and membrane transport. Lead author Joe Dobbs calls both proofs of concept built on still images of flash-frozen cells.
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Crick researchers report that two four-subunit RAD51 paralog complexes assemble and cap DNA repair filaments, after about 20 years of stalled study. The genes sit in the BRCA pathway and the structures may help explain disease mutations, but the work includes no drug or patient data.
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John Innes Centre and Kobe University researchers mapped how a small bait domain inside a newly described cereal receptor catches the blast fungus, then rebuilt that domain so it caught effectors from wheat and barley infections at once.
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Tristan Wagner's lab at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology purified the enzyme straight from Methanocaldococcus infernus and got the simplest nitrogenase structure solved so far, with features of all three families.
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Two Science papers name the protein VIPR and show it silencing a reporter gene and blocking phage in E. coli, guided by an RNA that reads two DNA letters and skips the third, a targeting rule anyone borrowing it will have to design around.
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A University of Osaka team solved the first crystal structure of the pufferfish Tas1r1/Tas1r3 binding domain and found bridges between subdomains that keep the clamshell closed on an imperfect fit. Flavor design sits several steps downstream.
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Tristan Wagner's group in Bremen purified the enzyme straight from Methanocaldococcus infernus, watched it hold together up to 98 C, and solved a near-atomic structure that mixes features of all three known nitrogenase families.
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Two Nature Communications papers describe mGluR receptors binding beta-arrestins in varying numbers and orientations. The authors say that variety, plus a first structure of an active complex, points to why earlier drugs disappointed.
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Ronald Micura's group in Innsbruck and Aiming Ren's in Zhejiang solved the RNA imaging tag with and without dye bound, and the residue that moves, G38, is what lets the dye leave again fast enough to blink.
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A team in Japan, Finland, Italy and the United States mapped ordered hydration shells above a peptide assembly at subnanometer resolution, and argues that water belongs in the definition of the protein.
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UC San Diego's cryo-EM structures show E. coli's transcription enzyme accepting hachimoji letters, with a companion paper finding it needs no hydrogen bonds to do so. Neither experiment happened inside a living cell.
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A Penn State team pulled native RNA polymerase II complexes out of fruit fly embryos and found some missing two of the canonical 12 subunits. The purified picture was tidier than the cell.
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Structural snapshots of Sld3 and Sld7 reading an activated MCM2-7 helicase show how cells check the motor is switched on before delivering Cdc45. The work is in yeast, and stays there for now.
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