(credit: UK Film Council )
Mice that can stutter like humans may seem pretty striking. But what really renders researchers speechless is the enigmatic genetic glitch that causes stuttering.
Researchers led by Terra D. Barnes of Washington University discovered that their genetically-engineered mice stutter due to DNA defects in a humdrum “housekeeping” gene. This gene codes for...
The native structure of the protein α-synuclein, which is implicated in Parkinson's disease, is controversial. In-cell nuclear magnetic resonance now shows that it remains disordered when loaded into living cells.
Nature doi: 10.1038/nature16871
Intracellular aggregation of the human amyloid protein α-synuclein is causally linked to Parkinson’s disease. While the isolated protein is intrinsically disordered, its native structure in mammalian cells is not known. Here we use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to derive atomic-resolution insights into the structure and dynamics of α-synuclein in different mammalian cell types. We show that the disordered...
