Kristen Holbrook, postdoctoral researcher in Sabeeha Merchant’s group, has recently accepted a position as a Scientist in the Toxicology group at Amgen. Her job will focus on the development and implantation of toxicology strategy for early lead discovery through clinical targets. In addition, she will work with a multidisciplinary team to design and manage a […]
Third-year Ph.D. student Colleen Hui from Merchant lab has been selected as a Graduate Scholar at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Funded by LLNL, the Livermore Graduate Scholar Program allows participants to gain hands-on experience with the cutting-edge instruments available at LLNL, and to apply them toward solving problems in the context of questions that […]
Third year graduate student Jessica Ochoa has been awarded a HHMI Gilliam Graduate Fellowship to fund her research and to support her ongoing outreach and diversity activities. Her current research focuses on the structure and function of protein-based microcompartments.
Significance New electron microscopy (EM) methods are making it possible to view the structures of large proteins and nucleic acid complexes at atomic detail, but the methods are difficult to apply to molecules smaller than approximately 50 kDa, which is larger than the size of the average protein in the cell. The present work demonstrates […]
Interactions of LARKS protein domains More than 1500 human proteins contain long, disordered stretches of “low complexity”—strings of just a few of the 20 common amino acids. The functions of these low-complexity domains have been unclear. Hughes et al. present atomic-resolution structures that suggest that short segments of two such domains can bind weakly to […]
Control of metabolism by compartmentation is a widespread feature of higher cells. Recent studies have focused on dynamic intracellular bodies such as stress granules, P-bodies, nucleoli, and metabolic puncta. These bodies appear as separate phases, some containing reversible, amyloid-like fibrils formed by interactions of low-complexity protein domains. Here we report five atomic structures of segments […]
Published in Nature Chemistry Aggregated tau protein is associated with over 20 neurological disorders, which include Alzheimer’s disease. Previous work has shown that tau’s sequence segments VQIINK and VQIVYK drive its aggregation, but inhibitors based on the structure of the VQIVYK segment only partially inhibit full-length tau aggregation and are ineffective at inhibiting seeding by […]
Dan Anderson We have our own water machine to make HPLC grade water. Use this very pure water, and chemicals of ACS grade or better. Ammonium Sulfate, saturated solution: Weigh about 80 grams of enzyme grade ammonium sulfate. In a 250ml beaker, stir the solid into 100ml of wa ter. Heat the mixture to dissolve […]
How to Prepare Heavy Atom Derivatives with Dimethyl Mercury and Tetraethyl Lead Duilio Cascio and Dan Anderson This technique was first used by Ward Smith at UCLA in the early 80s with RuBisCo. These are some of the first heavy atoms we try at UCLA. The success rate has been very high. DANGER: DIMETHYL […]
Publication in Nature, view here Abstract BinAB is a naturally occurring paracrystalline larvicide distributed worldwide to combat the devastating diseases borne by mosquitoes. These crystals are composed of homologous molecules, BinA and BinB, which play distinct roles in the multi-step intoxication process, transforming from harmless, robust crystals, to soluble protoxin heterodimers, to internalized mature toxin, […]
