structural-biology

As proteins are made in a cell, they are folded into the 3-D structure that allows them to work, but sometimes this process can go wrong.

Nature, Published online: 04 September 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-02801-0 Nobel laureate persisted despite widespread derision and revolutionized structural biology by protecting fragile crystals.

Nature Communications, Published online: 04 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-76843-3 Outer membrane proteins are delivered to the BAM complex by the chaperone SurA for proper assembly. Here, the authors report multiple structures of the SurA–BAM complex and show that SurA undergoes conformational changes to pass substrates to BAM.

The ability of AD treatments targeting classic pathological proteins to achieve meaningful clinical outcomes has been severely limited, shifting attention to the earlier upstream pathways that drive disease progression. Increasing evidence indicates that synaptic mitochondrial dysfunction is an early pathological event that directly contributes to synaptic loss and cognitive decline. This review …

A new study led by Francesca Storici, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and faculty member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, has uncovered an unexpected feature of human DNA linked to gene activity and the physical organization of DNA.

Nature Communications, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77254-0 NHE6 and NHE9 regulate endosomal pH and are linked to neurological disease. Here, the authors report cryo-EM structures of human NHE9 and two NHE6 splice isoforms, revealing sodium and lipid- binding sites, including an NHE6 phosphoinositide pocket.

Nature Communications, Published online: 03 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77432-0 PIP2 is known to inhibit rod photoreceptor CNG channels, but the mechanism is unclear. Here, the authors combine functional assays and cryo-EM to show PIP2 binds an allosteric site in CNGA1, blocking conformational changes required for channel opening.

The finding could eventually enable the use of DNA packaging in cells for disease diagnosis and treatment. In preserved cells, newly developed fluorescent probes allowed researchers to pinpoint individual dye molecules to within 3 nanometers, close to the width of the DNA double helix itself. The same molecules can also reveal how DNA is packaged [...]

The biology of the pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus remains largely unexplored, in part due to the large number of hypothetical and uncharacterized proteins. In this study, we focused on the protein encoded by the Afu4g10610 gene, which is consistently up-regulated across multiple stress-related transcriptomic datasets, including both in vitro and in vivo infection models. Functional chara…

ObjectiveSevere burn injury triggers profound skeletal muscle atrophy through incompletely understood molecular mechanisms. This study investigated the role of protein kinase C (PKC) isoforms in burn-induced muscle wasting and evaluated potential therapeutic targets.MethodsWe examined PKC isoform expression in skeletal muscle biopsies from burn patients with second-degree (n = 5) and third-degree…

This week on Heliox, we trace the science from a rigorous long COVID symptom meta-analysis, through the structural biology of the “turtle” variant, to why a proven diagnostic test still isn’t in your local lab — and why clean air might be the fastest fix we actually have. Podcast Episode · Heliox: Where Evidence Meets […]

.Scientists from the University of Regina used neutron imaging at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory to examine fossilized bones from dinosaurs, including a broken rib from Scotty, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton discovered. Neutron imaging allowed researchers to nondestructively examine the rib and corroborate earlier X-ray findings of a rare network of mineralized b…

Nature Communications, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77333-2 Protein language models (pLMs) capture biologically meaningful sequence patterns, but the features learned by these models remain largely opaque. Here the authors present MotifAE, an interpretable sparse autoencoder framework that reveals diverse sequence motifs and structural domains from pLM embeddings, i…

Nature Communications, Published online: 02 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-77002-4 This study shows that pathological α-synuclein variants have inherently different effects on cellular condensate formation. This behavior translates to differences in synaptic localization, which may have distinct pathophysiological consequences in disease.

Imagine a brain teaser where the challenge is to spot the difference between two nearly identical sandcastles. The only difference? The removal of three grains of sand.

GRP proposes an mirror-world hypothesis: Biological entities are mirrored in a lossy AI representations space, the geomtry of which is mirrored back to testable biological rules . Inspired by general relativity, GRP asks what remains invariant when coordinates, models or representations change?