Tag Archives: c terminal domain

Tau-tally Microtubular!

Structural model of physiological tau-microtubule interactions sheds light on neurological diseases that correlate with their disruption

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley have combined cutting-edge cryo-­electron microscopy (cryo-EM) with computational molecular modeling to produce a near-atomic-resolution model of the interaction between microtubules – crucial components of eukaryotic cell ultrastructure – and microtubule-associated proteins called tau. (more…)

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Revealing the Secrets of Motility in Archaea

Scientists from Berkeley Lab and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology analyze a unique microbial motor

The protein structure of the motor that propels archaea has been characterized for the first time by a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Germany’s Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Terrestrial Microbiology.

The motility structure of this third domain of life has long been called a flagellum, a whip-like filament that, like the well-studied bacterial flagellum, rotates like a propeller. But although the archaeal structure has a similar function, it is so profoundly different in structure, genetics, and evolution that the researchers argue it deserves its own name: archaellum. (more…)

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