Pile-ups in protein transport

Anyone who has ever tried to find a way through a crowded pedestrian zone has—literally—run into the problem: While some people choose to weave their way through the gaps, others stick to the straight and narrow, and ...

Revealing atomistic structures behind AFM imaging

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) allows us to visualize the dynamics of single biomolecules during their functional activity. All observations are, however, restricted to regions accessible by a fairly big probing tip during ...

Molecular assembly line brings muscles into shape

Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria and at the University of Cologne, Germany have discovered the molecular basis underlying the patterned folding and assembly of muscle proteins. ...

How cells get a skeleton

The mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet clearly understood. Now, Jean-François Joanny from the Physico Chemistry Curie Unit at the Curie Institute ...

Desmoplakin's tail gets the message

Cells control the adhesion protein desmoplakin by modifying the tail end of the protein, and this process goes awry in some patients with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, according to a study in The Journal of Cell Biology.

Releasing the brakes

Two regulators of protein filament assembly use dramatically different -- and competing -- methods to inhibit a common target.

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