Blog do BioMol-Lab (Universidade Federal do Ceará)

Image: A 3D atomic scale map, or molecular structure, of the 2019-nCoV spike protein. The protein takes on two different shapes, called conformations—one before it infects a host cell, and another during infection. This structure represents the protein before it infects a cell, called the prefusion conformation. Image courtesy of Jason McLellan/Univ. of Texas at Austin. Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and the NIH have created the first 3D atomic scale map of the part of the 2019 novel coronavirus that attaches to and infects human cells. Mapping this part, called the spike protein, is an essential step toward the development of vaccines and antiviral drugs to combat the virus. Jason McLellan, senior author on a paper published in Science today, and his colleagues have spent many years studying other coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. They had already developed methods for locking coronavirus spike proteins into a shape that made them easier to analy...

The number of protein structures being determined by cryo-electron microscopy is growing at an explosive rate. A cryo-electron microscope at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK.Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology A revolutionary technique for determining the 3D shape of proteins is booming. Last week, a database that collects protein and other molecular structures determined by cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, acquired its 10,000th entry. Submissions to the Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB) — a popular repository for structures solved using electron microscopy — have increased exponentially in recent years, largely because of the explosive growth in the number of cryo-electron microscopes in labs worldwide (see ‘Structure sleuths’). The EMDB curates structures solved with other microscopy methods, but the vast majority use cryo-EM.     PDF version MRC LMB Tritan Krios cryo-electron microscope. A cryo-electron...

Composto é pesquisado no Instituto de Química de São Carlos e pode revolucionar uma das mais importantes indústrias do mundo A Universidade de São Paulo (USP) desenvolveu um composto derivado do bagaço de cana que pode substituir o petróleo na fabricação de plásticos. A pesquisa é do professor do Instituto de Química de São Carlos Antonio Burtoloso. “A gente construiu uma molécula interessante, que é um poliol, que são muito utilizados para fazer alguns tipos de plásticos”, explicou o pesquisador. A substância é, segundo Burtoloso, semelhante a usada para elaborar plásticos como os usados em painel de carro ou alguns tipos de espuma dura. Para testar as possibilidades de uso prático, no entanto, o pesquisador está buscando parcerias com a indústria. “É um trabalho que está bem no início, eu estou tentando firmar parcerias para a construção desse tipo de material”, disse. O trabalho busca alternativas ao petróleo na fabricação desse tipo de material. “Ao invés da gente construir...