#protein

Cryo-electron Tomography Allows Us to Look Inside CellsWhen X-ray crystallography was developed decades ago, it allowed scientists to discern proteins inside cells. But to do that, they had to isolate those proteins and turn them into crystals to see them. Then came cryo-electron microscopy, which also required separating biomolecules from their surroundings. But now we have cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), which not only boosts the resolution of what scientists look at, but they can see proteins and biomolecules in three dimensions as they exist inside cells. Cryo-ET involves freezing and slicing a cell into unimaginably thin slices, imaging each slice with an electron microscope, and then assembling the images into a 3-dimensional visualization. Examining proteins at this level is crucial in understanding how some diseases work. Cryo-ET is already being used to study the protein action in ALS, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease. In the future, it can be used to study the effect of medication or other treatments in those proteins at the cellular level. Read more about this astounding imaging technique at Nature. -via Damn Interesting (Image credit: S. Albert et al./PNAS/CC BY 4.0)#imaging #cryoET #cellstructure #protein

Microbially Produced Artificial Amyloid-Silk Hybrid Protein Fiber is Stronger Than Steel and KevlarSpider silk is lighter than a feather but stronger than steel. It's thinner than a human hair but can handle weight hundreds of times its own. Its tensile strength (1.1 gigapascal) beats that of steel (05 gigapascal), and its toughness is comparable to that of Kevlar.But even nature can't compete with synthetic biology: a new lab-created artificial silk is even stronger. The new material is called polymeric amyloid fiber. It is produced by genetically modified bacteria in the lab of Fuzhong Zhang of Washington University in St. Louis.From WUSL The Source Newsroom:To solve this problem, the team redesigned the silk sequence by introducing amyloid sequences that have high tendency to form β-nanocrystals. They created different polymeric amyloid proteins using three well-studied amyloid sequences as representatives. The resulting proteins had less repetitive amino acid sequences than spider silk, making them easier to be produced by engineered bacteria. Ultimately, the bacteria produced a hybrid polymeric amyloid protein with 128 repeating units....The longer the protein, the stronger and tougher the resulting fiber. The 128-repeat proteins resulted in a fiber with gigapascal strength (a measure of how much force is needed to break a fiber of fixed diameter), which is stronger than common steel. The fibers’ toughness (a measure of how much energy is needed to break a fiber) is higher than Kevlar and all previous recombinant silk fibers. Its strength and toughness are even higher than some reported natural spider silk fibers.#spider #spidersilk #artificialspidersilk #steel #Kevlar #polymericamyloidfiber #protein #RecombinantProtein #amyloid #materialscience

Kaleidoscopic COVID-19 Art by Laura SplanIn her art series, "Unraveling," Brooklyn artist Laura Splan took the COVID-19 coronavirus spike protein models and animated them into a series of mesmerizing kaleidoscopic art.From Fast Company:Splan exclusively used the spike protein found on the surface of the coronavirus, the part of the virus that attaches itself to human cells, which is represented in the software as alpha helices, (the ribbony spirals), and beta sheets (the arrows).“Ultimately, these are amino-acid sequences, and because of the biochemistry of that sequence, the protein folds in a certain way through propulsion and attraction,” Splan said. “When you’re watching these animations, you can see these individual ribbon structures folding and unfolding and coming together and falling apart. That coming apart is what I did manually in the software. I unraveled the protein, and I animated it coming back together.”#COVID19 #coronavirus #kaleidoscope #protein #LauraSplan #animationRelated: We Don't Talk About Covid, No No No