Proteins

New, automated tool successfully classifies and relates proteins in unprecedented way

For the first time, researchers haveautomatically grouped fluorescently tagged proteins fromhigh-resolution images of cells. This technical feat opens a new way toidentify disease proteins and drug targets by helping to show whichproteins cluster together inside a cell.The approach, developed by Carnegie Mellon University, outperformsexisting visual methods to localize proteins inside cells...

UW's Rosetta software to unlock secrets of many human proteins

University of Washington TechTransferrecently licensed software that will give scientists a huge advantagein the fight against disease.The software, known as Rosetta, predicts how proteins fold, informationthat is highly valuable to biological and biomedical researchers.UW Tech Transfer's Digital Ventures licensed Rosetta software withoutcharge to the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), a...

UF Researchers Map Bacterial Proteins That Cause Tooth Loss

The human mouth teems with millions of enamel-eroding, gum-inflaming microbes. Now scientists have...

Hirsute Or Hairless? Two Proteins May Spell The Difference

If you're a cat fancier, you're well aware that hair follicles are expendable. The product of a spontaneous mutation that caught a cat breeder's eye, le chat nu, would quickly succumb in the wild—its winter coat consists of little more than a ridge of fur down the midback and tail—and needs special care to thrive as a pet. Hairless animals in the lab, on the other hand, can be very instructive. U...

Global analysis of membrane proteins

All cells are encased within a protective lipid membrane. The membrane is studded with many hundreds of different proteins that transport nutrients, ions, and water into and out of the cell. Such membrane proteins also help cells recognize each other in the body, and make the nervous system work. Scientists at Stockholm University have now mapped out nearly all of the membrane proteins in the ent...

UNC plant researchers discover proteins interact to form hair-trigger protection against invaders

Experimenting with Arabidopsis, a fast-growing cousin of the humble mustard plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill got a big surprise while investigating how plants respond to attacks from disease organisms such as bacteria and viruses. "Contrary to what we thought we'd find, our experiments showed that at least three different proteins work in concert with on...

'Mad cow' proteins successfully detected in blood

A method for identifying Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, has been cleared for diagnostic use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The test, known as the Gamma Phage Assay, was modified by scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) to improve its performance and reliability when used with clinical specimens. The original...

Researchers develop new method for facile identification of proteins in bacterial cells

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have developed a new method for identifying specific proteins in whole cell extracts of microorganisms using traditional peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF). The key to the new method, according to the researchers, is a "shortcut" for preparing samples that makes PMF faster and more economical. By reducing the cost of protein identi...

Hopkins scientists uncover 'tags' that force proteins to cell surface

Discovery likely to streamline drug and vaccine development Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered internal "shipping labels" that allow -- and perhaps force -- hundreds if not thousands of proteins to get to the surface of cells and stay there. Two natural proteins that use one of these "tags" are the ion channel that lets heart cells contract on cue, and the docking point that allows...

Researchers create functioning artificial proteins using nature's rules

By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts. In two papers appearing in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Rama Ranganathan, a...

UCSD discovery may provide novel method to generate medically useful proteins

A team led by University of California, San Diego biochemists has discovered the mechanism by which a simple organism can produce 10 trillion varieties of a single protein, a finding that provides a new tool to develop novel drugs. In the September 18 advance on-line publication of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, the researchers describe the mechanism by which a virus...

Prostate cancer uses Wnt signaling proteins to promote growth of bone tumors

Prostate cancer is a cruel disease. Left untreated, prostate cancer cells often metastasize, or spread, to bone where they form fracture-prone tumors that are extremely painful. More than 80 percent of men who die from prostate cancer die with metastatic disease in their bones. But scientists know very little about how migrating prostate cancer cells set up housekeeping in bone tissue and...

A real time look at interactions between RNA and proteins

For the first time, researchers can now peer inside intact cells to not only identify RNA-binding proteins, but also observe–in real-time–the intricate activities of these special molecules that make them key players in managing some of the cell's most basic functions. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who developed the new technology see this advance as one of the...

New evidence questions the simple link between prion proteins and madcow disease

While newly published research confirms that under laboratory circumstances prion-protein can be absorbed across the gut, it also shows that this is unlikely to occur in real life. In addition, the results show that the places in the gut that do take up these disease-associated proteins are different from the locations where infectivity is known to be amplified. The findings will be published in...

A surprising pair of proteins help make healthy eggs

Human eggs rely on handmaidens. Called granulosa cells, they surround eggs and deliver nutrients and hormones. Without granulosa cells, eggs cannot mature and be successfully fertilized. How do these handmaidens grow? Biologists at Brown University and the University of California–Berkeley have discovered that two proteins ?TAF4b and c-Jun ?team up to turn on about two dozen genes inside t...

UW-Madison engineers squeeze secrets from proteins

Proteins, one of the basic components of living things, are among the most studied molecules in biochemistry. Understanding how proteins form or "fold" from sequenced strings of amino acids has long been one of the grand challenges of biology. A common belief holds that the more proteins are confined by their environment, the more stable - or less likely to unfold - they become. Now, as r...

Sea coral's trick helps scientists tag proteins

The glow emitted by a variety of sea coral helped Russian scientists harness the protein that generates the light to create a tiny fluorescent tag that responds to visible light. The two-color tag should help researchers follow individual proteins as they dart around inside living cells. Under a microscope, the two-color tag--called Dendra because it is derived from the sea coral Dendronep...

New test to detect rare proteins in blood

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have developed a paradigm-shifting method for detecting small amounts of proteins in the blood. Applications of this method will make discerning low-abundance molecules associated with cancers (such as breast cancer), Alzheimer's disease, prion diseases, and possibly psychiatric diseases relatively easy and more accurate compared wi...

Proteins stop blood-vessel and tumor growth in mice

Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center report in the March issue of Cancer Research that a pair of promising proteins, known as fibulins 3 and 5, slow the growth of cancer tumors in mice by preventing blood vessels from sprouting. The proteins are promising candidates for use in cancer therapy. "Healthy humans produce fibulin proteins, which regulate cell proliferation...

Proteins spur diabetic mice models to grow blood vessels, nerves

University of Utah researchers have taken a potentially powerful new therapy for treating diabetes, peripheral vascular disease, and other illnesses out of the test tube and into animals by demonstrating it restores nerve and blood vessel growth in mice. The research has particularly important implications for the estimated 21 million Americans with diabetes, a disease that damages both ne...

A catalogue of proteins

Working with colleagues from Denmark, Canada, China, and the U.S.A., the scientists have shown how cutting-edge methods can be used to catalogue the entire inventory of active proteins in cell organelles at a particular moment. Their work sheds considerable light on how cells use proteins. The work is published in the journal Cell (Cell 125, 1-13). Cells are like small cities. They contain...

Study reveals how cells destroy faulty proteins in cystic fibrosis

The cellular system that degrades faulty proteins created by the cystic fibrosis gene has been identified by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill scientists. Turning off the degradation system allows some proteins to regain their proper shape, offering a new avenue for treatments aimed at curing the disease. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal disease caused by a defective gene that...

Scientists solve sour taste proteins

A team led by Duke University Medical Center researchers has discovered two proteins in the taste buds on the surface of the tongue that are responsible for detecting sour tastes. While the scientific basis of other primary types of flavors, such as bitter and sweet, is known, this is the first study to define how humans perceive sour taste, said team senior scientist Hiroaki Matsunami, Ph...

Parallel evolution: Proteins do it, too

Wings, spines, saber-like teeth---nature and the fossil record abound with examples of structures so useful they've evolved independently in a variety of animals. But scientists have debated whether examples of so-called adaptive, parallel evolution also can be found at the level of genes and proteins. In a paper published online in Nature Genetics June 11, evolutionary biologist Jianzhi (...

Proteins as parents

So that we can move, and so that our heart beats, we need proteins with special mechanical properties, "molecular springs", which give our tissues the necessary strength and take care of elasticity and tensibility. Such proteins are also interesting as building blocks for novel high-tech materials because the natural materials often outperform the artificial: One only has to think about the highl...

Mechanism for neurodenegerative diseases linked to transport proteins

Hampering the transport of proteins within cells may underlie several adult-onset neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington's, ALS and Kennedy disease. Understanding how this cell transport is blocked in these diseases may offer targets for future therapy. In a new study published online June 4 in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of M...

High-tech research shows cocaine changes proteins and brain function

In the first large-scale analysis of proteins in the brains of individuals addicted to cocaine, researchers have uncovered novel proteins and mechanisms that may one day lead to new treatment options to fight addiction. The results, reported in the current issue of Molecular Psychiatry, released on-line today, show differences in the amounts of 50 proteins and point to profound changes in...

Iowa State researchers improving plastics made from corn and soy proteins

David Grewell picked up the little plastic model of a molecule he keeps in his office. He scrunched the model's folding pieces into a ball. That's about the shape of a soy or corn protein, said Grewell, an Iowa State University assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. Then he unfolded the model into a long, straight loop. That's what happens when researchers add some glycer...

Plague proteome reveals proteins linked to infection

Recreating growth conditions in flea carriers and mammal hosts, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory scientists have uncovered 176 proteins and likely proteins in the plague-bacterium Yersinia pestis whose numbers rise and fall according to the disease’s virulence. The team, led by the Department of Energy laboratory staff scientists Mary Lipton and Kim Hixson, identified the proteins as...

Proteins anchor memories in our brain

Scientists have discovered that autoimmunity can be triggered in the thymus, where the immune system's T cells develop, if T cells fail to recognize just one of the body's thousands of proteins as "self." The research confirms an emerging view that autoimmunity can start in this cradle of the immune system, and not only at the sites where autoimmune diseases emerge, such as the pancreas in the c...

Proteins may behave differently in natural environments

When in an environment similar to that in which they exist naturally, proteins and multiprotein assemblies may demonstrate actions or dynamics different than those they exhibit when in the static form in which they are most often studied, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report in the current issue of the journal Structure. In a study using electron cryomicroscopy, Dr....

First major study of mammalian 'disorderly' proteins

Investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital turned up the heat on "disorderly" proteins and confirmed that most of these unruly molecules perform critical functions in the cell. The St. Jude team completed the first large-scale collection, investigation and classification of these so-called intrinsically unstructured proteins (IUPs), a large group of molecules that play vital roles in...

Gene-bender proteins may sway to DNA

Among the many genes packed into each cell of our body, those that get turned on, or expressed, are the ones that make us who we are. Certain proteins do the job of regulating gene expression by clasping onto key spots of DNA -- the nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions. How does the protein recognize a particular binding site" Structural changes in both the protein and DNA,...

New technique boosts size of proteins that can be analyzed

Imagine you had to break a secret code, but you could see only part of the message. That's the kind of frustration researchers face when trying to identify proteins and characterize how those proteins are modified in cells by biological processes. But now, Cornell researchers have extended a powerful technique to increase by fourfold the size of a protein that can be analyzed, to those con...

Proteins necessary for brain development found to be critical for long-term memory

A type of protein crucial for the growth of brain cells during development appears to be equally important for the formation of long-term memories, according to researchers at UC Irvine. The findings could lead to a better understanding of, and treatments for, cognitive decline associated with normal aging and diseases such as Alzheimer's. The findings appear in the early online edition...

Living view in animals shows how cells decide to make proteins

Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have visualized in a living animal how cells use a critical biological process to dice and splice genetic material to create unique and varied proteins. The scientists say the findings, made in mice, help explain a key wonder of human biology: how the same genes found in every cell of an individual’s body can produce different proteins in differ...

Proteins may predict lung transplant rejection

Using the latest in high tech tools, researchers have identified three proteins that were highly predictive of chronic lung rejection up to 20 months before the rejection occurred. Lung transplant patients have the highest mortality rate of organ recipients, about 45% over five years, said lead investigator and pulmonologist Chris Wendt. Currently, there is no reliable way to predict which...

Freeze! Scientists film proteins at work by freezing them at different states

It is difficult to find similarities between Grenoble and Hollywood or between the researchers at the ESRF and the Institut de Biologie Structural (IBS) and world-known filmmakers. However, scientists from these institutes based in Grenoble (France) have managed to produce a movie. The actors are not celebrities but a protein whose role is to eliminate toxic molecules. They filmed this protein in...

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

Using a novel video-imaging system, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have been able to observe proteins important in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease moving along axons, extensions of nerve cells that carry proteins away from the cell body. Understanding this process of axonal transport is important for studying many neurodegenerative diseases. The study appeare...

FSU researchers determine a critical factor in workings of proteins

Scientists know that a better understanding of how proteins bond could lead to more effective treatments for genetic disorders and other life-threatening conditions....