Julie Tubbs from John Tainer’s group at Scripps published a totally sweet paper in the June 11, 2009 issue of Nature demonstrating that the ATL protein uses nucleotide flipping to link alkylated base damage to the nucleotide excision repair pathway. This publication was in part made possible by the SIBYLS beamline. Abstract: Alkyltransferase-like proteins (ATLs) share…
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The structure of XPD was solved using data collected at the SIBYLS beamline and published in Cell this past summer. Recently this outstanding work was featured in the ALS Science Highlights. “XPD helicase is an enzyme that unwinds the DNA double helix; it is one component of an essential repair mechanism that maintains the integrity of…
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In the March 2009 Journal of Synchrotron Radiation special issue on radiation damage, in addition to authoring two papers, our illustrious James Holton’s ankle appears on the cover! The first paper deals with the practical aspects of controlling and understanding radiation damage and will be very interesting to crystallographers who would like to collect data more…
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In a recent article in the Journal of Molecular Biology a paper has been published exploring the ability of prokaryotic thermophiles to supply stable human protein homologs for structural biology. The authors have made use of an unusual deep-sea hydrothermal-vent worm called Alvinella pompejana. This worm has been found in temperatures averaging as high as…
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An excellent paper came out today in the Oct 3rd issue of Cell detailing structural, biochemical, and genetic studies of the Mre11-DNA complex and its role in detecting and repairing double-strand breaks in DNA. Both the SAXS and crystallography data were collected at the SIBYLS beamline. There is also a nice writeup by Paul Preuss…
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In the September 19, 2008 issue of Cell, we report striking conformational rearrangements in the crystal structure of NEDD8~Cul5ctd-Rbx1 and SAXS analysis of NEDD8~Cul1ctd-Rbx1 relative to their unmodified counterparts. These results point to conformational control of Cullin-RING ligase (CRL) activity, with ligation of NEDD8 shifting equilibria to disfavor inactive closed architectures, and favor dynamic, open forms that promote polyubiquitination. Cullin-RING ligases…
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The structure of Sulfolobus acidocaldarius XPD has recently been solved and the biochemical activites of various disease causing mutations measured. Results are reported in the May 30th issue of Cell. LBNL has also done a nice write up.
As recently [reported](http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/160topoII.html) in the ALSNews: > “The veil has finally been lifted on an enzyme that is critical to the process of DNA transcription and replication and is a prime target of antibacterial and anticancer drugs. Researchers at Berkeley Lab and the University of California, Berkeley, have produced the first three-dimensional structural images of…
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