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Tag: "fold" at biology news

Scientists identify prion's infectious secret

...oteins are the cell’s workhorses, and they need to fold into complex and precise shapes to do their jobs. Prions are proteins that start out normally, but then at some point misfold—rather like an origami swan that comes out looking and acting instead like a vulture. But prions have another characteris...

Decoding protein structures helps illuminate cause of diabetes

...nsulin. An unknown trigger prompts the protein to fold into sharp fibers that poke holes in pancreatic cells, killing them. Though scientists already have a good idea of the healthy "before" and dangerous "after" hIAPP structures, the steps in between remain somewhat of a mystery and may hold clues ...

Study of protein folds offers insight into metabolic evolution

...netic reconstructions, or family trees, of protein fold architectures in metabolism. They created a new da...T). The result is a multicolored mosaic of protein fold evolution. The mosaic shows that modern metabolic networks ?and even individual enzymes ?are compose...

Whiteflies and plant viruses can help each other to speed up biological invasion

...fly had higher fecundity and longevity by 12 and 6 fold when feeding on plants infected by one virus, and by 18 and 7 fold when feeding on plants infected by another virus. Population density of the B whitefly on virus-infe...

MIT model helps researchers 'see' brain development

...tomical structures, such as the “central sulcus,?a fold that separates the motor cortex from the somatosensory cortex. Yu applied a technique developed by Fischl to perform this alignment. The second step involves modeling the folds of the brain mathematically in a way that allows the researchers to a...

Bacterial walls come tumbling down

...bly mimics the lipid II molecule by tucking into a fold in the enzyme and taking up the space needed to bind to lipid II, the researchers believe. "We would like to see the enzyme in a complex with its natural substrates as well as with inhibitors," Lovering said. In the meantime, scientists now have the ...

DNA ends: Common tool, different job

...n known as oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide-binding fold or OB-fold, a protein fold that is commonly used to recognize and bind to either DNA or RNA. Based on these findings, Lundb...

Proteins important in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease travel in the slow lane

...called fast and slow components, with a 200 to 300 fold difference in average velocities," says first author Subhojit Roy, MD, PhD, a neuropathologist and Research Associate in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. "While scientists have seen proteins in the fast component move rapidly to t...

Why don't all moles progress to melanoma?

... coded instructions from genes. Chaperone proteins fold these amino acids into specific shapes. When too many of them build up in the membrane, or when something goes wrong with the folding process, the system gets bogged down. This can stress or even kill the cell. To prevent this, the ER sends out di...

Comprehensive model is first to map protein folding at atomic level

...time, can fully map and predict how small proteins fold into three-dimensional, biologically active shapes...ing of amino acids, how the resulting protein will fold -- the first computer model to fully replicate folding of a protein as happens in nature. In more th...

Brown scientists map structure of DNA-doctoring protein complex

...ow these six proteins interact with each other and fold DNA during site-specific recombination. "Once you know how these proteins and DNA are arranged, you have a much better sense of their function," said Xingmin Sun, a postdoctoral research associate in the Landy lab and the lead author of the jour...

Proteins may behave differently in natural environments

...ch chaperones or helps misfolded protein molecules fold into the shape that allows them to achieve their purpose in the cells. Misfolded proteins have been implicated in a number of neurodegenerative and other diseases. Electron cryomicroscopy allows scientists to take very detailed two-dimensional im...

Biologists probe the machinery of cellular protein factories

...f a protein. Proteins are linear molecules that fold into complex three-dimensional shapes to carry out their functions. They are made from amino acid building blocks, and the sequence of amino acids determines the protein's structure. Amino acids are carried to the ribosome by transfer RNA molecules. ...

Protein folding: Building a strong foundation

... stable parts of a protein are also the parts that fold first. The findings appear in the Sept. 13 issue...e structure called a beta sheet, which is a common fold in nature that consists of two beta-sheets of amino-acid strands meshed together. "In folding stud...

'Smart' genetic therapy helps the body to heal itself

...s ?that is able to increase SMN protein levels 2-4 fold in cell lines derived from SMA patients. Later, they showed that valproate also raised SMN levels in neuronal tissues such as cultured brain slices derived from epilepsy patients after surgery, as well as motor neuron cultures derived from rat embr...

Record air pollution above the Arctic

...ystem. „The present air pollution is more than 2.5 fold higher than values measured in spring 2000. As a consequence, we expect significantly increase warming ", explains Dr. Andreas Herber of the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven. Scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute have been measuring the ...

Mapping the protein world

...f large molecules. "ARP/wARP needs to meet a two fold challenge: firstly, it needs to be able to work with structural information at lower resolution, within the range of 3.0 to 3.5 Ångstroms, and secondly, the models produced have to be complete and validated. The new NIH grant will help us to approach...

Scientists reverse evolution

...uldn't blink their eyes, wiggle their whiskers and fold back their ears. But when a portion of the Hoxb1 regulatory sequence was inserted into Hoxa1, the new gene performed the jobs of both genes. Mice born with the combined gene still were able to breathe and survive thanks to the Hoxa1 gene, and they...

'Sticky' mice lead to discovery of new cause of neurodegenerative disease

... proteins resulting from serine substitution could fold improperly, clogging and eventually killing cells. When Ackerman and her colleagues examined the Purkinje cells of sticky mouse mutants, this is exactly what they saw. They also detected biochemical evidence that the cells were making an unsucce...

Researchers identify human DNA on the fast track

...ins. The UC Santa Cruz team showed that these RNAs fold into particular shapes characterized by several helices. The changes to HAR1 during human evolution seem to have altered the length and configuration of some of these helices. "It's a brand new structure, unique," said Salama. "The downside is that w...

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