Eukaryotic transcription factors are grouped into families and, due to their similar DNA binding domains, often have the potential to bind to the same genomic regions. This can lead to redundancy at the level of DNA binding, and mechanisms are required to generate specific functional outcomes that enable distinct gene expression programmes to be controlled by a particular transcription factor. ...

Yeast prions are self-templating protein-based mechanisms of inheritance whose conformational changes lead to the acquisition of diverse new phenotypes. The best studied of these is the prion domain (NM) of Sup35, which forms an amyloid that can adopt several distinct conformations (strains) that produce distinct phenotypes. Using magic-angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, we...

Niemann-Pick Protein C2 (npc2) is a small soluble protein critical for cholesterol transport within and from the lysosome and the late endosome. Intriguingly, npc2-mediated cholesterol transport has been shown to be modulated by lipids, yet the molecular mechanism of npc2-membrane interactions has remained elusive. Here, based on an extensive set of atomistic simulations and free energy calcula...

The acyl-CoA binding protein (ACBP) is essential for the fatty acid metabolism, membrane structure, membrane fusion, and ceramide synthesis. Here high resolution crystal structures of human cytosolic liver ACBP, unliganded and liganded with a physiological ligand, myristoyl-CoA are described. The binding of the acyl-CoA molecule induces only few structural differences near the binding pocket. T...

The retro-analogue of glutathione disulfide was bound to the GSSG binding site of crystalline glutathione reductase. The binding mode revealed why the analogue is a very poor substrate in enzyme catalysis. The observed binding mode difference between natural substrate and retro-analogue is explained.

background dermatophytosis is a cutaneous fungal infection with a worldwide occurrence. in dermatophyte infections, the release of keratinocyte cytokines, in the presence of dermatophyte antigens, causes an acute phase response; subsequently, the acute-phase proteins are produced by hepatocytes. mannose–binding lectin (mbl), an acute-phase protein, also acts as a kind of pattern recognition rec...