issue contents
June 2024 issue
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Cover illustration: Pillar data-acquisition strategies for cryo-electron tomography of beam-sensitive biological samples [Parkhurst et al. (2024), Acta Cryst. D80, 421–438]. In order to achieve isotropic resolution in the presence of electron-beam damage to the specimen in cryo-electron tomography, an n-helix tilt scheme is described and simulated, which uses overlapping and interleaved tilt series to maximize the use of a pillar geometry.
research papers
The structure of ketohexokinase C in complex with a natural substrate and product ADP mimicking the Michaelis complex is reported and a comparison with other structures with and without ligands shows that it undergoes a conformational change that places the enzyme in a catalytically competent form. These findings will be of interest to those in the areas of enzymology, enzyme structure–function relationships and drug discovery.
The biochemical and X-ray crystallography-based characterization of human dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH) in complex with a potent antiproliferative agent is presented. The peculiar conformation of a protein loop involved in the gating mechanism at the cofactor-binding site reveals a new binding modality of the tested compound that will contribute to a reappraisal of the inhibition of human DHODH.
Open
access
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The crystal structure of the DUF domain of EccC5 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a degenerated ATPase domain with potential implications in the opening and closure of the membrane pore in the M. tuberculosis ESX-5 secretion system, is reported.
PDB reference: DUF domain of EccC5 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, 8rin
Open
access
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The relation between template size, shape and angular sampling is systematically evaluated to identify ribosomes in a ground-truth annotated data set. The findings are discussed in a theoretical framework.
Open
access
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Pillar data-acquisition strategies for cryo-electron tomography of beam-sensitive biological samples
An n-helix tilt scheme for cryo-electron tomography of pillar-shaped samples is described and simulated, allowing the entire pillar volume to be reconstructed as a single unit. Three related tilt schemes to enable the collection of the most isotropic information across all spatial frequencies are also evaluated.
Open
access
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The integration of Capsules within the SBGrid software-management platform marks a pivotal advancement in addressing the challenges of scientific software distribution, dependency management and computational reproducibility.
Open
access
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Anomalous scattering and PanDDA were employed to determine the binding orientation(s) of novel planar and low-occupancy fragment hits containing sulfur and/or halogen atoms that bind to SARS-CoV-2 nsp1. This approach was validated for these challenging-to-fit fragments with an anomalous data-collection strategy designed to mitigate radiation-damage effects, which are known to particularly affect halogenated fragments due to their higher X-ray absorption cross sections.