The voltage-gated sodium (Nav) channels are responsible for the initiation and propagation of action potentials. Being associated with a variety of channelopathies, they are targeted by multiple pharmaceutical drugs and natural toxins. We determined the crystal structure of a bacterial Nav channel NavRh in a potentially inactivated state a few years ago, which is a homotetramer in primary...
Micro-crystal electron diffraction (MicroED) has shown in recent years to be a promising method for determining
macromolecular structures (1–5). It enables structural biologists to study proteins from micron-sized
3D crystals that are too small to be studied by conventional X-ray crystallography. Furthermore, MicroED
can be applied to biomolecules of low molecular weight that are beyond what...
Urocanate reductase (UrdA) is a bacterial enzyme that was first characterized in
2012 and shown to reduce urocanic acid resulting in a product imidazole propionate
(1). Unlike similar enzymes fumarate reductases, UrdA hasn’t been well investigated.
Besides being an interesting novel enzyme enabling bacteria to grow in anaerobic
conditions with urocanic acid as electron acceptor (1), UrdA was...
