Browse our latest Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics articles

Understanding the coordination of the forces generated in embryos by two processes, convergent extension and convergent thickening, is key to understanding how a hollow sphere of cells develops into an elongated embryo.

Integrative structural analyses of human insulin degradingenzyme (IDE) reveal how IDE selectively degrades peptides that form toxicaggregates, which guides IDE-based therapeutic innovations to treat diabetesand Alzheimer's disease.

Phosphorylation deactivates TRIM21 B Box autoinhibition to licence proinflammatory signalling by cytosolic antibodies.

The asymmetric combination of saturated and polyunsaturated acyl chains in phospholipids as typically observed in synapses makes membranes prone to deformation and fission without compromising their impermeability.

Crystallography and single particle cryo-EM reveal hexameric and pentameric structures of the ExbBD energizer in the Ton system and oligomeric transition, which provides a unique working mechanism and a new vision of dynamic membrane biology.

Blastopore closure in Xenopus is driven by two morphogenic mechanisms that have strongly context dependent effects on tissue movement and that generate tensile force across tissues: convergent extension, as expected, and, unexpectedly, convergent thickening.

The epistasis observed in TF-DNA binding preferences can be explained by the presence of two optima of very similar Gibbs energy that are located relatively far from each other in sequence space.

The identification of a single-CD4 bound asymmetric HIV-1 Envelope trimer intermediate provides new mechanistic insights into the activation of Envelope for fusion, and highlights the importance of asymmetry in biology.

Nuclear magnetic resonance analysis revealed the structural and dynamical changes in MgtE during the channel closure caused by the cooperative Mg²⁺-binding, which had remained undescribed only by a static crystal structure.

Probing the DNA motor SpoIIIE at the single-molecule level has revealed its force-generating step, rich translocation dynamics during motor operation and a novel, bi-phasic mechanical response to opposing force.