Assembling the Pieces of Protein Puzzles

Assembling the pieces

Assembling the pieces.

Transition metals function as cofactors in specific proteins, catalyzing electron exchange reactions, binding substrates and stabilizing protein structure. Studies of human diseases and of model organisms have defined many of the molecular details of metal uptake, trafficking, and excretion. The current challenge is to integrate these details into a systematic view of metal content, speciation,...

Assembling pieces of the centromere epigenetics puzzle

The centromere is a key region for cell division where the kinetochore assembles, recognizes and attaches to microtubules so that each sister chromatid can segregate to each daughter cell. The centromeric chromatin is a unique rigid chromatin state promoted by the presence of the histone H3 variant CENP-A, in which epigenetic histone modifications of both heterochromatin or euchromatin states a...

Assembling puzzles from preassembled blocks.

Assembling large jigsaw puzzles is difficult, and most of us haven’t even seen a 10,000 piece puzzle on sale in a toy store. Such puzzles require an enormous dedication, and most children (not to mention adults) are not willing to put the time and effort into their assembly. Moreover, it is only feasible for multi-feature compositions like “Garden of Pleasures” by Hieronymus Bosch (one of the b...

Visualizing Mu transposition: assembling the puzzle pieces.

Mobile genetic elements, once a curiosity of maize genetics, are now known to be remarkably prevalent in the genomes of organisms ranging from pathogenic bacteria to humans. The varied consequences of these elements include the alteration of gene expression and the spread of drug resistance genes among bacteria. Additionally, many viruses and bacteriophages that covalently integrate their own g...