Search results for "Biochemistry and Chemical Biology"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Mutations in SKI in Shprintzen-Goldberg syndrome lead to attenuated TGF-β responses through SKI stabilization.
2020
ABSTRACTShprintzen-Goldberg syndrome (SGS) is a multisystemic connective tissue disorder, with considerable clinical overlap with Marfan and Loeys-Dietz syndromes. These syndromes have commonly been associated with enhanced TGF-β signaling. In SGS patients, heterozygous point mutations have been mapped to the transcriptional corepressor SKI, which is a negative regulator of TGF-β signaling that is rapidly degraded upon ligand stimulation. The molecular consequences of these mutations, however, are not understood. Here we use a combination of structural biology, genome editing and biochemistry to show that SGS mutations in SKI abolish its binding to phosphorylated SMAD2 and SMAD3. This resul…
'Palaeoshellomics' reveals the use of freshwater mother-of-pearl in prehistory
2019
The extensive use of mollusc shell as a versatile raw material is testament to its importance in prehistoric times. The consistent choice of certain species for different purposes, including the making of ornaments, is a direct representation of how humans viewed and exploited their environment. The necessary taxonomic information, however, is often impossible to obtain from objects that are small, heavily worked or degraded. Here we propose a novel biogeochemical approach to track the biological origin of prehistoric mollusc shell. We conducted an in-depth study of archaeological ornaments using microstructural, geochemical and biomolecular analyses, including ‘palaeoshellomics’, the first…
FRET-based dynamic structural biology: Challenges, perspectives and an appeal for open-science practices.
2021
International audience; Single-molecule FRET (smFRET) has become a mainstream technique for studying biomolecular structural dynamics. The rapid and wide adoption of smFRET experiments by an ever- increasing number of groups has generated significant progress in sample preparation, measurement procedures, data analysis, algorithms and documentation. Several labs that employ smFRET approaches have joined forces to inform the smFRET community about streamlining how to perform experiments and analyze results for obtaining quantitative information on biomolecular structure and dynamics. The recent efforts include blind tests to assess the accuracy and the precision of smFRET experiments among d…