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…)
Berkeley Lab scientists image cell-to-cell connections between soil microbes
The next time your Facebook stream is filled with cat videos, think about Myxococcus xanthus.The single-cell soil bacterium also uses a social network. But forget silly distractions. M. xanthus relies on its connections to avoid getting eaten and to score its next meal.
That’s the latest insight from a team of Berkeley Lab scientists. Using several imaging techniques, they saw for the first time that M. xanthus cells are connected by a network of chain-like membranes. (more…)
Berkeley Lab Researchers Produce First Step-by-Step Look at Transcription Initiation
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have achieved a major advance in understanding how genetic information is transcribed from DNA to RNA by providing the first step-by-step look at the biomolecular machinery that reads the human genome.
“We’ve provided a series of snapshots that shows how the genome is read one gene at a time,” says biophysicist Eva Nogales who led this research. “For the genetic code to be transcribed into messenger RNA, the DNA double helix has to be opened and the strand of gene sequences has to be properly positioned so that RNA polymerase, the enzyme that catalyzes transcription, knows where the gene starts. The electron microscopy images we produced show how this is done.” (more…)
