With the aid of more than 70,000 home computer users throughout the world, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have, for the first time, accurately predicted the three-dimensional structure of a small, naturally occurring globular protein using only its amino acid sequence.

Pheromones are like the molecules you taste as you chomp on a greasy french fry: big and fatty.

Thioredoxins (TRXs) are a large family of small proteins that function in multiple metabolic processes in all living organisms. They are a good example of proteins that have diversified throughout evolution, probably from one ancestral protein that arose in ancient cyanobacteria.

The relatedness of an animal food protein to a human protein determines whether it can cause allergy, according to new research by scientists from the Institute of Food Research in Norwich and the Medical University of Vienna.

Dr. Dan Gewirth, Hauptman-Woodward senior research scientist, has just solved the structure of the first mammalian GRP94 protein implicated in immune diseases such as sepsis, AIDS and certain cancers. His work is being published today in a cover article in a top scientific journal - Molecular Cell.

Scientists working in the only lab at MIT doing hematology research have uncovered a protein that plays a key role in the recycling of iron from blood.

Based in part on protein structures determined at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists at the University of Utah have developed new peptides that appear to be significantly more effective at blocking HIV's entry into cells than other drugs in their class.

Often called the most devastating epidemic in the recorded history of the world, the 1918 influenza virus pandemic was responsible for more than 40 million deaths across the globe. The incredible lethality of the 1918 flu strain is not well understood, despite having been under intense scrutiny for many years.

Researchers at Harvard University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have found that a simple circadian clock found in some bacteria operates by the rhythmic addition and subtraction of phosphate groups at two key locations on a single protein. This phosphate pattern is influenced by two other proteins, driving phosphorylation to oscillate according to a remarkably accurate 24-hour cycle.

Researchers have uncovered a biological link between the protein whose mutation causes early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and a gene variant linked to late-onset AD. The researchers said their finding could lead to new approaches to treating AD.

The present can tell you a lot about the past, but you need to know where to look. A new study appearing this month in Genome Research reveals that protein architectures – the three-dimensional structures of specific regions within proteins – provide an extraordinary window on the history of life.

Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville have discovered how loss of a gene can lead to accumulation of toxic proteins in the brain, resulting in a common dementia, and they say this mechanism may be important in a number of age-related neurological disorders.