Xylan feels the pinch

Scam Feels the Pinch

The paper by Movileanu et al. (2001) in this issue of The Journal describes a test of the applicability of the substituted-cysteine-accessibility method (SCAM; Akabas et al., 1992; Akabas et al., 1994) to the problem of locating the narrowest region of a channel lumen. Movileanu et al. (2001) use unusually large sulfhydryldirected reagents to probe the wide bore channel formed by Staphylococcal...

Big science feels the pinch in Europe.

A chaperone feels the heat

JCB • VOLUME 167 • NUMBER 2 • 2004 190 A chaperone feels the heat chaperone is supposed to keep its cool when temperatures get hot. But Syed Rizvi, Laura Mancino, Malini Raghavan (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI), and colleagues show that calreticulin—a glycoprotein chaperone—starts to melt in the heat. The resulting structural changes actually improve its chaperone activity and may also ...

Plant Chromatin Feels the Heat

Temperature is a key environmental signal regulating plant development, but the mechanisms by which plants sense small changes in ambient temperature have remained elusive. Kumar and Wigge (2010) now reveal that eviction of the histone variant H2A.Z from nucleosomes performs a central role in plant thermosensory perception.

Golgi Feels DNA’s Pain

The Golgi apparatus consists of disc-like cisternae, stretching around the nucleus through forces exerted by F-actin and the Golgi membrane protein GOLPH3. Farber-Katz et al. now report that DNA damage triggers Golgi dispersal and inhibits vesicular transport through DNA-PK-mediated GOLPH3 phosphorylation, thereby linking the DNA damage response to Golgi regulation.