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Coronavirus COVID-19

A novel coronavirus was found to be the cause of a respiratory illness first detected in Wuhan, China in 2019. 3D structural studies are aiding scientists to understand how the coronavirus infects humans and helping to find new ways to treat the viral spread (video by Fusion Animation).

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Opening a Gate to Human Health

by Alice Clark (PDBe)
In the 1970s, an exciting discovery of a family of medicines was made by the Japanese scientist Satoshi Ōmura. One of these molecules, ivermectin, is shown in this artwork bound in the ligand binding pocket of the Farnesoid X receptor, a protein which helps regulate cholesterol in humans. This structure showed that ivermectin induced transcriptional activity of FXR and could be used to regulate metabolism.

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Structural flexibility of the periplasmic protein, FlgA, regulates flagellar P-ring assembly in Salmonella enterica.

H Matsunami, YH Yoon, VA Meshcheryakov, K Namba, FA Samatey. Scientific Reports 2016 doi: 10.1038/srep27399
A periplasmic flagellar chaperone protein, FlgA, is required for P-ring assembly in bacterial flagella of taxa such as Salmonella enterica or Escherichia coli. Here we present the open and closed crystal structures of FlgA from Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, grown under different crystallization conditions. An intramolecular disulfide cross-linked form of FlgA caused a dominant negative effect on motility of the wild-type strain.

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Polio is still here!
Polio vaccines have been available since the 1950s, but the challenges of vaccination in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan have prevented worldwide eradication. In 2022, polio was found circulating in parts of New York State, USA. The polio virus has a small RNA genome enclosed in an icosahedral capsid composed of several proteins, shown cut in half. The structures of virus capsids can be explored using free FirstGlance in Jmol.

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