Today it is exactly 60 years ago (April 25, 1953) J.D. Watson and F.H.C Crick published their famous DNA structure paper in Nature. You can read the original article at Nature website here for free. In 1962 James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery. As of 2003 the 25th of April is celebrated as DNA day.
Monthly Archives: April 2013
Happy DNA day!
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Boiling ubiquitin results in a new landmark in protein folding
This week David Shaw set another milestone in the protein-folding field. Two years ago he was the first to show how twelve “fast folding” proteins fold. Now he is the first to show how a “slow” protein folds. As test case he used the well-studied ubiquitin protein. The main goal was to prove the folding rules they found for “fast folders” is also applicable to “slow folding” proteins.
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The simple wonders of nature: a niffy enzyme
Transmishion electron microscope (TEM) image of a Acidianus archaeon by George Rice
Now and then you stumble upon a straightforward self-explaining stereotypical paper. In this case it bears the clear name “Evolution of a new enzyme for carbon disulphide conversion by an acidothermophilic archaeon”(Smeulders et al., 2011) and written by the Microbiology department of Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. It extensively describes how a hydrolase (which converts CS2 to H2S and CO2) was likely to be evolved from a β-carbonic anhydrase (which converts CO2 in HCO3–). But the work preceding this conclusion and the enzyme itself are actually much more interesting…
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How do proteins behave if they are being stretched on a nanoscale torture rack?
Fig1: The Ubiquitin protein in cartoon representation used in the study (PDB: 1UBQ ).
Well this nanoscale torture rack is actually a sophisticated atomic force microscope (AFM) and the stretch is more ‘gentle’ then in the Medieval period, since it is (most of the time) reversible. The question arises; how can we describe these kind of extensions and can we, just as in basic material science, come up with an basic relationship between stress and strain?
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