Publications by authors named "M A Rankin"
Serendipitous high-resolution structure of Escherichia coli carbonic anhydrase 2.
Acta Crystallogr F Struct Biol Commun
February 2025
X-ray crystallography remains the dominant method of determining the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Nevertheless, this resource-intensive process may be hindered by the unintended crystallization of contaminant proteins from the expression source. Here, the serendipitous discovery of two novel crystal forms and one new, high-resolution structure of carbonic anhydrase 2 (CA2) from Escherichia coli that arose during a crystallization campaign for an unrelated target is reported.
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- Bacteria produce valuable natural products through polyketide synthases (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS), which often include thioesterases for product release.
- Some pathways yield amidated products needing a specialized terminal amidation domain (TAD) that hasn’t been well characterized.
- The TAD binds NAD and has a structure similar to a cyanobacterial enzyme, hinting at a broader occurrence of TADs in bacteria, potentially leading to the discovery of new amidated natural products.
Article Synopsis
- This study investigates sleep patterns and activity levels in individuals with premanifest Huntington's disease (Pre-HD) compared to healthy controls (HC), highlighting a gap in sleep research focused on this early stage of HD.
- It involved 36 Pre-HD participants categorized based on their estimated time to diagnosis, assessed through wrist-worn actigraphy, sleep diaries, and questionnaires.
- Results showed that those closer to diagnosis (NEAR and MID groups) experienced more sleep fragmentation, while still maintaining similar overall sleep quality compared to HC, suggesting that addressing sleep fragmentation could be a key intervention for managing HD symptoms.
The human brain undergoes rapid development during the first years of life. Beginning in utero, a wide array of biological, social, and environmental factors can have lasting impacts on brain structure and function. To understand how prenatal and early life experiences alter neurodevelopmental trajectories and shape health outcomes, several NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices collaborated to support and launch the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpisodic memory is memory for experiences within a specific temporal and spatial context. Episodic memories decline early in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Recollection of episodic memories can fail with both AD and aging, but familiarity and recollection memory uniquely fail in AD.
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