“An unnatural amino acid has given researchers a switch to turn on a specific enzyme with light. This tool will allow scientists to determine the timing of cellular signaling and identify which parts of a signaling network might be good drug targets. When organisms or cells receive signals from their surroundings, a cascade of enzymes […]
Light turns on caged enzyme
Understanding how hormones activate G protein-coupled receptors.
In a recent issue of Nature, the groups of Chris Tate and Andrew Leslie in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, in collaboration with Gebhard Schertler now at the Paul Scherrer Institut, Switzerland, have reported the determination of the structures of the β1 adrenergic receptor (β1AR), a GPCR, when bound to four different clinically relevant agonists. […]
Greg Winter presented with Distinguished Technopreneur Speaker Award
“The Distinguished Technopreneur Speaker (DTS) Forum, organised by Exploit Technologies, serves as a relevant platform for entrepreneurs, industry leaders, researchers, scholars and students to converge, share ideas and network with various industry players to seed the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship amongst the local scientific community. This year’s Distinguished Technopreneur Speaker Award recipient is serial […]
Building on a legacy in antibody research
“With world-class facilities and a vibrant research community, the Babraham Research Campus has recently attracted some of the most exciting new generation antibody companies in Europe…In the 1980s, Jonathan Howard and Geoff Butcher from the Babraham Institute collaborated closely with Nobel Prize winner César Milstein and colleagues at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular […]
Sean Munro: Revealing the Golgi’s true identity
“Although cargo proteins move through the different organelles of the secretory pathway, other proteins remain in place to give each compartment its own unique identity and function. Sean Munro, from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, has been interested in how proteins find their place within the secretory pathway since his PhD […]
Bizarre love triangle: first amoebal sex-determining system discovered
The social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum is used widely in the laboratory as a convenient ‘model organism’ to help discover, among other things, how cells move, and how they fight bacterial infection. In the soil under your feet and in forest leaf litter, where it normally lives, this organism also goes through an enigmatic sexual cycle. […]