Browse our latest Biochemistry and Chemical Biology articles

The identification of the mechanism of action of vacor, an environmental neurotoxin which causes neurodegeneration by activating the pro-degenerative enzyme SARM1, raises important questions on SARM1 as a mediator of environmental neurotoxicity and has implications for drug discovery.

Increased catalysis has been suggested to be an adaptive trait of enzymes to growth at lower temperature, but systematic analysis suggests that temperature exerts a weak selection pressure on enzyme rate enhancement, with observed variation arising from other evolutionary forces.

Directed evolution of the resistance enzyme Cfr under antibiotic selection identifies increased Cfr expression and stability as strategies to boost resistance and reveals that Cfr modification of the ribosome confers resistance by sterically occluding binding of antibiotics.

Multi-omic analyses reveal a connection between the integrated stress response and the regulation of redox and amino acid metabolism when the TCA cycle is impaired.

Molecular dynamics simulation assisted engineering of recombinant soluble human ACE2 N-glycosylation by site-directed mutagenesis or glycosidase treatment yields a superior SARS-CoV-2 decoy receptor.

Faster ligand-binding kinetics of integrin low-affinity states suggests that integrin binding to ligand and intracellular adapters and the actin cytoskeleton precedes their stabilization, together with tensile force, of the high-affinity, extended-open integrin conformation.

Mutations along the signaling pathway of the E. coli sensor histidine kinase PhoQ alter signal gain and ligand-sensitivity by altering thermodynamic allosteric coupling between domains.

Definition of the mitoribosome interactome revealed inner membrane proteins and elucidated new assembly factors of the cytochrome c reductase and cytochrome c oxidase.

Cryo-EM analysis of full-length human epidermal growth factor receptor provides a molecular explanation for how ligand-induced differential effect in the ligand-binding extracellular module tunes the transmembrane signaling mediated by epidermal growth factor receptor.

Functional analysis reveals a distinct mode of action of the allosteric modulators in the GABA_B receptor in a pocket that is formed only in the active state and identifies a region in the GABA_B2 subunit important for allosteric agonism.