structural-biology

Hundreds of millions of proteins make up the known protein universe, but most remain largely unexplored. Inside the human body, thousands of these dark proteins remain mysteries. Scientists may know they exist, but not what they do or why they matter.

Nature Communications, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-76387-6 Platelet Factor 4 (PF4) is a chemokine involved in several physiological processes. Ma et al. discovered that an allosteric switch exposes cryptic PF4 epitopes, suggesting that stabilizing non-immunogenic conformations of self-proteins may suppress autoimmune responses.

For decades, scientists have understood proteins primarily through two defining features: their amino acid sequence and their three-dimensional structure. This framework has driven major advances in biology, biotechnology and medicine, culminating in recent artificial intelligence tools capable of predicting protein structures with remarkable accuracy. Yet a fundamental challenge remains: Even wh…

Life in the deep sea is under immense pressure—literally. Such extreme conditions can disrupt the delicate structures of proteins essential to life. Yet somehow, the proteins in deep-sea creatures remain functional. This raises an intriguing question: how?

Researchers have revealed the structure and composition of an understudied region called the transition zone in hair-like cilia. They show that mutations in two genes break linkers that hold the transition zone together, hampering the cilia's ability to clear mucus from the airways. The work adds to the number of genes known to cause the rare disease primary ciliary dyskinesia, which could help e…

Proteins are fundamental to biological processes, with their function determined by the complex interplay between the amino acid sequence and the three-dimensional structure. Developing generative models capable of understanding this intrinsically multi-modal relationship is crucial for fields like drug discovery and protein engineering. Existing models often rely on a multi-stage training proces…

The brain is a black box of densely packed neurons, blood vessels and immune cells, all locked away in a sealed skull. WashU's Song Hu has dedicated his career to unlocking that puzzle box by developing new ways to "see" inside. His team's newest innovation could give researchers a new view of how brain cells and blood vessels work together and what happens when the coupling between the two break…

[Journal of Cell Science] Researchers investigated the role of SNED1–integrin interactions in SNED1 ECM assembly. They found that the LDV motif, but not the RGE motif, in SNED1, was required for ECM build-up and the patterning of SNED1 and the fibrillar proteins fibronectin and collagen.

TRPM4 is a Ca2+-activated, monovalent-selective cation channel that conducts Na+ and K+ while remaining essentially impermeable to Ca2+. By translating cytosolic Ca2+ elevations into membrane depolarization rather than additional Ca2+ influx, TRPM4 operates as an electrical signal converter that tunes excitability, secretion, vascular tone, immune-cell behavior, and cell-death pathways. Dysregula…

[biorxiv.org] Life began with the emergence of a molecule that could replicate its own genetic material, a task plausibly mediated by an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase ribozyme. Here, we present the […] The post Structure Of An RNA polymerase Ribozyme Replication Complex appeared first on Astrobiology .

For over 60 years, scientists have debated a basic structural question about cone photoreceptors, the cells that let vertebrates see color: are their light-sensing disk membranes closed off inside the cell, or are they open to the extracellular space? In non-mammalian species, the answer is clear - cone disk membranes typically stay continuous with the surrounding plasma membrane and are therefor…

Researchers at the University of Twente have developed an optical method that follows the shape changes of a

Scientists have directly observed how two negatively charged DNA molecules can pair up despite normally repelling each other. Positively charged metal ions appear to bridge the gap, helping matching DNA helices align groove for groove like a molecular zipper. The discovery confirms a theory proposed two decades ago and could help researchers understand DNA interactions involved in cancer and othe…

Christoph Müller shared his thoughts on the state of life sciences and structural biology after 35 years as a researcher who has made important contributions to the field.

Conservation tells you a residue matters. It doesn't tell you why. Some are conserved to stay still, others precisely because they must move. We built ADEPT, an open web server that separates the two signals and flags pathogenic variants static predictors call benign.

[Nature Communications] Researchers established a genetic code expansion-based platform in mESCs for site-specific proteomic mapping and functional analysis within native chromatin. Using this platform, they revealed Rps19bp1 promotes Sirt1-mediated deacetylation of histone H2B lysine 108 acetylation.

This dataset provides paired single-cell morphology, whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology, and source histological slide imagery for juvenile rat neocortical neurons from the EPFL Laboratory of Neural Microcircuitry (LNMC, gathered by MT). The curated explorer subset spans 396 slices, with 244 3D morphological reconstructions, 641 whole-cell patch-clamp recordings, and 244 histological slide …