The LMB is simply having a wonderful Christmastime! Day 347 of #LMB365 shows the restaurant decked in festive finery, ready to welcome over 200 people for a delicious 3 course lunch with all the trimmings. Thank you to our amazing catering team
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LMB 365 – Day 346
CryoEM structures determined by the Modis group show how the innate immune sensor MDA5 recognizes viral RNA by forming filaments. ATP hydrolysis is coupled to structural changes in the filament, which are proposed to promote discrimination between viral and cellular RNAs. Depicted here on day 346 of #LMB365 is a model of an MDA5-dsRNA filament (foreground). A viral dsRNA genome and the endosome that delivered it into the cytosol are shown in the background. Image created by Lesley McKeane (Visual Aids) in consultation with Yorgo Modis.
LMB 365 – Day 345
On day 345 of #LMB365 we have a picture by Katja Röper in the Cell Biology Division. Shown is a confocal image of the two tissue primordia that will form the tubes of the salivary glands in a Drosophila embryo, a model system for the formation of tubular organs. Tube precursor cells are in pink, cell outlines are in blue. The Röper lab studies how important tubular organs form during development, from flies to humans.
LMB 365 – Day 344
On this day each year the Nobel Prize award ceremony and banquet is held. To celebrate this, day 344 of #LMB365 shows a very rare collection of Nobel Prize Medals awarded to members of the LMB, together with champagne bottles signed by some Nobel laureates at the party on the day they found out they had won the Prize
LMB365 – Day 343
The technique of Hydrogen Deuterium exchange/Mass Spectrometry can be used to highlight regions of a protein’s structure that change upon binding to another protein or ligand. Day 343 of #LMB365 shows a butterfly plot or chart, showing the incorporation of deuterium into a protein over time (orange shortest, black the longest period). The upper half of the plot shows incorporation by the protein in complex, while the lower area indicates the incorporation by the protein alone. The plot can give insights into regions of intrinsic disorder as well as regions of higher order structure such as alpha-helices and beta-sheets.
LMB 365 – Day 342
Day 342 of #LMB365 shows PhD student, Elyse Fischer, loading her sample into the column of one of the LMB’s FEI Titan Krios microscopes. Protein samples frozen on grids in amorphous ice are placed inside a nanocap. Upon insertion of the nanocap, a mechanical arm is activated which brings the samples into an autoloader. This streamlines grid screening and data collection as up to 12 grids can be exchanged into the column with just a press of the button.