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Coronavirus Spike Protein Membrane Fusion

by Eric Martz
SARS-CoV-2 spike protein "spears" the host membrane with a fusion peptide and drags the virus envelope membrane transmembrane domain close to the host membrane, initiating fusion. This moves the virus RNA genome into the host cell, initiating infection.
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Molecular Sculpture

by Eric Martz
A historical review on sculptures and physical models of macromolecules.

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Geobacter nanowire structure surprise.

F Wang, Y Gu, JP O'Brien, SM Yi, SE Yalcin, V Srikanth, C Shen, D Vu, NL Ing, AI Hochbaum, EH Egelman, NS Malvankar. Cell 2019 doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.03.029
Bacteria living in anaerobic environments (no oxygen) need alternative electron acceptors in order to get energy from their food. An acceptor abundant in the earth's crust is red iron oxide ("rust"), which gets reduced to black iron oxide (magnetite). Many bacteria, such as Geobacter, get their metabolic energy by transferring electrons to acceptors that are multiple cell diameters distant, using protein nanowires. These were long thought to be pili. But when the structure of the nanowires was solved in 2019, to everyone's surprise, they turned out to be unprecedented linear polymers of multi-heme cytochromes. The hemes form an electrically conductive chain in the cores of these nanowires.

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Eastern Equine Encephalitis virus
Although only a few people in the USA get Eastern Equine Encephalitis every year, the fatality rate is 30%, and many survivors have ongoing neurological problems. The virus is transmitted by mosquitoes from animals, especially birds, to humans. This RNA virus has a complicated capsid (a slab of which is shown) composed of protein shells with an enclosed lipid bilayer. The structures of virus capsids can be explored using free FirstGlance in Jmol.

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