this week literature recap
Every week, I scan journals for interesting articles. Here are some of the really interesting ones I found over the last week…
from Science Magazine:
Serotonin Mediates Behavioral Gregarization Underlying Swarm Formation in Desert Locusts
by Michael L. Anstey, Stephen M. Rogers, Swidbert R. Ott, Malcolm Burrows, and Stephen J. Simpson
Of general interest, serotonin induces the phenotypic switch from solitary to gregarious behavior in desert locusts.
Stretching Single Talin Rod Molecules Activates Vinculin Binding
Armando del Rio, Raul Perez-Jimenez, Ruchuan Liu, Pere Roca-Cusachs, Julio M. Fernandez, and Michael P. Sheetz
Providing evidence for a novel mechanism of protein-protein interactions, force-induced stretching of proteins can expose previous cryptic binding sites and promote binding to their ligands.
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from Nature Magazine
Adaptive immune features of natural killer cells
by Joseph C. Sun, Joshua N. Beilke and Lewis L. Lanier
This study provides evidence for adaptive properties of natural killer cell responses that is a major shift in our understanding of NK cells, which have generally been considered a component of the innate immune response.
Allergenicity resulting from functional mimicry of a Toll-like receptor complex protein
by Aurelien Trompette, Senad Divanovic, Alberto Visintin, Carine Blanchard, Rashmi S. Hegde, Rajat Madan, Peter S. Thorne, Marsha Wills-Karp, Theresa L. Gioannini, Jerry P. Weiss and Christopher L. Karp
This study demonstrates a novel mechanism through which allergens (in this case, one of the most common and clinically significant allergic antigens: house dust mite antigen) may trigger allergic responses and therefore suggests another potential therapeutic target for allergies.
Crypt stem cells as the cells-of-origin of intestinal cancer
Nick Barker, Rachel A. Ridgway, Johan H. van Es, Marc van de Wetering, Harry Begthel, Maaike van den Born, Esther Danenberg, Alan R. Clarke, Owen J. Sansom and Hans Clevers
Consistent with the previous literature on cancer stem cells, this study provides more evidence for intestinal stem cells localized to the intestinal crypts as the orginating source for intestinal cancers.
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from Cell
Large-Scale Structural Analysis of the Classical Human Protein Tyrosine Phosphatome
by Alastair J. Barr, Emilie Ugochukwu, Wen Hwa Lee, Oliver N.F. King, Panagis Filippakopoulos, Ivan Alfano, Pavel Savitsky, Nicola A. Burgess-Brown, Susanne Müller and Stefan Knapp
This study sheds insight into the classical PTP family through a comprehensive analysis of 22 human PTP crystal structures in combination with prior structural knowledge. The authors have developed a “phosphatome” resource that may provide insight into intrafamily PTP diversity, catalytic activity, substrate recognition, and autoregulatory self-association.
