by University of Massachusetts Amherst Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain While we often think of diseases as caused by foreign bodies—bacteria or viruses—there are hundreds of diseases affecting humans that result from errors in cellular production of proteins. A team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst leveraged the power of cutting-edge technology, including an...
by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory An illustration depicts a study by SLAC and Stanford, including cryo-EM imaging (left), that discovered how a cellular machine called TRiC (right) directs the folding of tubulin (yellow tangle at the center of TRiC). Tubulin is the protein building block of microtubules that serve as the scaffolding and transport system in...
Defective protein folding causes nervous system diseases in humans and hinders the proper functioning of the chloroplasts in plants The chloroplasts containing misfolded protein aggregates send a SOS signal to the cell nucleus, where a molecular switch is turned on to activate the chaperone synthesis. Various human nervous system diseases, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis...
