News

2 Feb 2021

Emerging Topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance - Tanja Mittag (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) and Adam Lange (Humboldt-University Berlin)

The series Emerging topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance will continue on February 4^th at 16:00 CEST with the following lecturers and topics:

Tanja Mittag (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital): Understanding the molecular interactions underlying liquid-liquid phase separation of low-complexity domains
Adam Lange (Humboldt-University Berlin): Atomic structures and functional dynamics of rhomboid proteases, non-selective cation channels, and bacteriophage tail tubes

26 Jan 2021

Emerging Topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance - Francesca Marassi (Sanford Burnham Prebys) and Katherine Henzler-Wildman (UW-Madison/NMRFAM)

The series Emerging topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance will continue on January 28^th at 16:00 CEST with the following lecturers and topics:

Francesca Marassi (Sanford Burnham Prebys): Molecular insights to calcified deposit formation from NMR
Katherine Henzler-Wildman (UW-Madison/NMRFAM): Breaking down the mechanism of a proton-coupled transporter

19 Jan 2021

Job position - Expert in scientific programming and data management

The Institute of Biotechnology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic at the Biotechnology and Biomedicine Centre of the Academy of Sciences and Charles University in Vestec announce an open position for an expert in scientific programming with experience in scientific data processing for a European project focused on Standards for Data Archival and Exploitation.

18 Jan 2021

Emerging Topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance - Wei Qiang (Binghamton University) and Rasmus Linser (Technical University Dortmund)

The series Emerging topics in Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance will continue on January 21th at 16:00 CEST with the following lecturers and topics:

Wei Qiang (Binghamton University): Membrane Interactions of 40-Residue Beta-Amyloid Peptides
Rasmus Linser (Technical University Dortmund): ¹H-detected solid-state NMR as an access to µs timescale conformational dynamics in large enzymes

15 Jan 2021

The 2021 ISMAR conference will be held during August 22-27

as a joint conference consisting of 22nd International Society of Magnetic Resonance Conference, 9th Asia-Pacific NMR Symposium, 60th Annual Meeting of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Society of Japan
and 60th Annual Meeting of the Society of Electron Spin Science and Technology. The conference will be held as a hybrid format of on-line and virtual events with options to participate in Osaka, Japan. The on-line
format will allow participants from all the time zones to interact actively.

12 Jan 2021

Cryo-EM data decode the mechanism behind the honeybee viral infections

How does the honeybee virus behave when infecting the host cell? Does it resemble pulling a note out of a bottle or rather opening a surprise egg? Karel Škubník and his colleagues, led by structural virologist Pavel Plevka from CEITEC Masaryk University, have discovered new findings describing the mechanism of genome release of honeybee viruses. They shed a new light on the exiting believe regarding behaviour of honeybee viruses during the host cell infection process. The scientists reached this remarkable conclusion with the help of cryo-electron microscopy combined with protein simulations, which were conducted by Robert Vácha and his research group. The research results were published on 1^st January 2021 in the international scientific journal Science Advances. More details are presented in the Research Highlight below.

Highlights of Coronavirus Structural Studies

5 May 2020

Structure, Function, and Antigenicity of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in >90,000 infections and >3,000 deaths. Coronavirus spike (S) glycoproteins promote entry into cells and are the main target of antibodies. We show that SARS-CoV-2 S uses ACE2 to enter cells and that the receptor-binding domains of SARS-CoV-2 S and SARS-CoV S bind with similar affinities to human ACE2, correlating with the efficient spread of SARS-CoV-2 among humans. We found that the SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein harbors a furin cleavage site at the boundary between the S₁/S₂ subunits, which is processed during biogenesis and sets this virus apart from SARS-CoV and SARS-related CoVs. In the study published in Cell, David Veesler with coworkers determined cryo-EM structures of the SARS-CoV-2 S ectodomain trimer, providing a blueprint for the design of vaccines and inhibitors of viral entry. Finally, they demonstrate that SARS-CoV S murine polyclonal antibodies potently inhibited SARS-CoV-2 S mediated entry into cells, indicating that cross-neutralizing antibodies targeting conserved S epitopes can be elicited upon vaccination.

Newsletters

1 Jan 2017

Newsletter 1/2017

Reader's Corner Archive

TIP

30 Jul 2019

Principles for Integrative Structural Biology Studies

Guru of integrative structural biology computation Andrej Sali and Michale P. Rout summarize in the recent Cell Primer Principles for Integrative Structural Biology Studies.

Visualization of biological macromolecules at near-atomic resolution: cryo-electron microscopy comes of age

The topical review by Alok K. Mitra recapitulates developments and transformational advances of cryo-EM technology.

16 Jul 2019

The expanding toolkit for structural biology: synchrotrons, X-ray lasers and cryo-EM

Samar Hasnain et. al. describe the steadily-expanding methodologies for atomic resolution studies in The expanding toolkit for structural biology: synchrotrons, X-ray lasers and cryo-EM. Of note is the following statistics: Despite the wealth of structures in the Protein Data Bank, a closer examination reveals that 89% of the structures, i.e. 126 994, are of proteins or complexes with a molecular weight of less than 160 kDa. Furthermore, only 4% of the deposited structures have a molecular weight in excess of 300 kDa.