Page 32: News | Czech Infrastructure for Integrative Structural Biology

News

13 May 2020

Successful Installation of World’s First 1.2 GHz NMR System Enables Novel Functional Structural Biology Research

On May 4, 2020, Bruker Corporation announced the successful installation and customer acceptance of the world’s first Avance™ NEO 1.2 GHz NMR system at the CERM of the University of Florence. This new 1.2 GHz NMR system will enable CERM to perform novel research in functional structural biology of proteins and protein complexes.

11 May 2020

Visualizing an unseen enemy; mobilizing structural biology to counter COVID-19

Edward N. Baker from School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand, has published an editorial in a number of IUCr Journals [see also Baker, E. N. (2020). IUCrJ. 7, 366–367; Baker, E. N. (2020). Acta Cryst. D76, 311–312] to highlight the work of structural biologists in fighting COVID-19. At the end of his short recollection he emphasizes: “My purpose in writing this editorial, however, is to applaud the energy and skill of the researchers, and their public spirit in sharing their results. And I take a vicarious pride in the fact that the discipline to which I have given my professional life – crystallography – has such an important role at a time of international crisis.”

15 Apr 2020

On the SARS-Cov-2 Inhibitor Track

To develop specific anti-coronavirus therapeutics and prophylactics, the molecular mechanism that underlies viral infection must first be defined. The recent study published in Cell Research solved the X-ray crystal structure of six-helical bundle (6-HB) core of the HR1 and HR2 domains in the SARS-CoV-2 S protein S2 subunit, revealing that several mutated amino acid residues in the HR1 domain may be associated with enhanced interactions with the HR2 domain, as compared to SARS-CoV.

14 Apr 2020

Instruct-ERIC Resource Centre – Supporting research relating to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19

Instruct-ERIC has put together a catalogue of tools, information and support that is available from Instruct and the wider scientific community to support COVID-19 research Many Instruct-ERIC services are available via remote access, where samples can be sent for analysis without the need for researchers to travel.

7 Apr 2020

The 2020 Petr Sedmera Award

for the best published work in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance knows its winner. The competition is organized by the Czech Spectroscopic Society of Jan Marcus Marci and sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Teva. The awarded paper Quantitative Conformational Analysis of Functionally Important Electrostatic Interactions in the Intrinsically Disordered Region of Delta Subunit of Bacterial RNA Polymerase was published in Journal of the American Chemical Society by Lukáš Žídek and co-workers from CEITEC, Masaryk University.

6 Apr 2020

Czech Large Research Infrastructures and SARS-CoV-2

As a part of the Large Research Infrastructures website there has been established a special section dedicated to SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 research. It gathers offers of Czech research infrastructures services related to this topic.

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

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.