MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
One of the world's leading research institutes, our scientists are working to advance understanding of biological processes at the molecular level - providing the knowledge needed to solve key problems in human health.
As well as having instinctive responses to their environment, nearly all animals can learn to associate particular sights, smells, or sounds with rewards or negative consequences. It had been thought that two separate brain centres control these two different types of responses; innate and learned.
Internal transport between different cellular compartments is a complicated process requiring formation of transport carriers, and sorting the right cargo into those carriers, for delivery to the correct part of the cell. Retromer is a protein complex that forms transport carriers departing from the cell’s central sorting station, the endosome. The architecture of the complex and how it contributes to carrier formation and cargo sorting was unknown.
Cells need to respond quickly when they encounter stress conditions in order to avoid consequences such as cell death. New research from Madan Babu’s group in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division has identified a mechanism by which cells can enhance the expression of stress-response genes by increasing the efficiency of protein synthesis specifically for these genes.
Michel Goedert’s group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division and Sjors Scheres’ group in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division have used electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) to solve the structures of tau filaments from patients with the frontotemporal dementia Pick’s disease.
When an animal detects a stimulus that might signal danger, this primes sensory and motor organs to respond more readily to further stimulation. This is called sensitisation and is one aspect of the more general phenomenon of arousal, in which animals become more alert and can respond more effectively to potential threats. However, the basic principles of how arousal is triggered have not been fully understood.
Many complex tubular organs, including kidney, lung, the intestine and several glands, form from a flat layer of cells during animal development. Failure of proper tube formation underlies severe congenital malformations such as Spina Bifida, and the failure to maintain tube architecture for instance underlies Polycystic Kidney Diseases. How tissues transition from flat 2D structures to 3D tubes is poorly understood.