Nat Struct Mol Biol
January 2025
The compaction of chromatin is a prevalent paradigm in gene repression. Chromatin compaction is commonly thought to repress transcription by restricting chromatin accessibility. However, the spatial organization and dynamics of chromatin compacted by gene-repressing factors are unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFα-Synuclein (αSyn) aggregates, detected in the biofluids of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), have the ability to catalyze their own aggregation, leading to an increase in the number and size of aggregates. This self-templated amplification is used by newly developed assays to diagnose Parkinson's disease and turns the presence of αSyn aggregates into a biomarker of the disease. It has become evident that αSyn can form fibrils with slightly different structures, called "strains" or polymorphs, but little is known about their differential reactivity in diagnostic assays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe development of a flow chemistry platform for the generation of modified protein targets via expressed protein ligation (EPL) is described. The flow EPL platform enables efficient ligation reactions with high recoveries of target protein products and superior reaction rates compared to corresponding batch processes. The utility of the flow EPL technology was first demonstrated through the semisynthesis of the tick-derived chemokine-binding protein ACA-01 containing two tyrosine sulfate modifications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHIV can infect non-dividing cells because the viral capsid can overcome the selective barrier of the nuclear pore complex and deliver the genome directly into the nucleus. Remarkably, the intact HIV capsid is more than 1,000 times larger than the size limit prescribed by the diffusion barrier of the nuclear pore. This barrier in the central channel of the nuclear pore is composed of intrinsically disordered nucleoporin domains enriched in phenylalanine-glycine (FG) dipeptides.
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