13-Tungstoborate Stabilized by an Organostannoxane Hexamer.

Mechanism of Vps4 hexamer function revealed by cryo-EM

Vps4 is a member of AAA+ ATPase (adenosine triphosphatase associated with diverse cellular activities) that operates as an oligomer to disassemble ESCRT-III (endosomal sorting complex required for transport III) filaments, thereby catalyzing the final step in multiple ESCRT-dependent membrane remodeling events. We used electron cryo-microscopy to visualize oligomers of a hydrolysis-deficient Vp...

Analysis of the crystal structure of an active MCM hexamer

In a previous Research article (Froelich et al., 2014), we suggested an MCM helicase activation mechanism, but were limited in discussing the ATPase domain because it was absent from the crystal structure. Here we present the crystal structure of a nearly full-length MCM hexamer that is helicase-active and thus has all features essential for unwinding DNA. The structure is a chimera of Sulfolob...

Ultra-fast electron capture by an electrosterically- stabilized metal nanoparticle

GTP-binding of ARL-3 is activated by ARL-13 as a GEF and stabilized by UNC-119

Primary cilia are sensory organelles indispensable for organogenesis and tissue pattern formation. Ciliopathy small GTPase ARLs are proposed as prominent ciliary switches, which when disrupted result in dysfunctional cilia, yet how ARLs are activated remain elusive. Here, we discover a novel small GTPase functional module, which contains ARL-3, ARL-13, and UNC-119, localizes near the poorly und...

Biases in Illumina transcriptome sequencing caused by random hexamer priming

Generation of cDNA using random hexamer priming induces biases in the nucleotide composition at the beginning of transcriptome sequencing reads from the Illumina Genome Analyzer. The bias is independent of organism and laboratory and impacts the uniformity of the reads along the transcriptome. We provide a read count reweighting scheme, based on the nucleotide frequencies of the reads, that mit...