Proteins and peptides form the cornerstone of cellular function, serving not only as essential catalysts and structural components but also as mediators of signalling and regulation in health and ...

The microbe Pyrodictium abyssi is an archaeon—a member of what's known as the third domain of life—and an extremophile. It ...

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease are caused by folding errors (misfolding) in proteins or peptides, i.e. by changes in their spatial structure. This is the ...

Proteins are often called the building blocks of cells, but even those building blocks need to be built. One of the most important steps in the process of building proteins is glycosylation, when ...

Researchers have identified a new function of a well-known enzyme: the signal peptidase complex is responsible for the quality control of membrane proteins. The discovery of this new function for a ...

Sometimes, life can be a real drag—especially if you’re a protein weighed down by unwanted baggage. Researchers have unveiled evidence that these ponderous proteins could be involved in a range of ...

All cells need to sense and respond to their environment, to know when to activate genes, build proteins, and carry out their ...

When a cell receives a message from outside, it generates a molecule called cyclic AMP (cAMP) to relay this message. To ensure the signal reaches the correct effector without triggering pathways ...

A small fragment of a protein from spider silk enables researchers to express functional hydrophobic and aggregation-prone proteins. As scientists have learned more about the structure and synthesis ...

Host cells that are modified to express therapeutic proteins are the foundation of the biopharmaceutical industry. However, these cells also express proteins other than the ones they’re supposed to ...

When blood cancer in children progresses particularly aggressively, it is often due to a genetic defect: a gene fusion, such ...