mTORC1 carries out its role by regulating certain anabolic (synthetic) and catabolic (degradative) processes. These involve protein synthesis; production of the protein-synthesis machinery in the form ...

Living things, from bacteria to humans, depend on a workforce of proteins to carry out essential tasks within their cells. Proteins are chains of amino acids that are strung together according to ...

Genes are the building blocks of life, and the genetic code provides the instructions for the complex processes that make ...

Thousands of previously undescribed protein–metabolite interactions have been mapped by analysing outbred mice.

The findings, which detail how amino acids shaped the genetic code of ancient microorganisms, shed light on the mystery of how life began on Earth. "You see the same amino acids in every organism, ...

With only rare exceptions, every organism constructs proteins from just 20 building blocks called amino acids. Recently, however, researchers modified Escherichia coli bacteria so that the ...

To reveal the structural principles determining substrate specificity of 4-coumarate:CoA ligase (4CL), the crystal structure of the phenylalanine activation domain of gramicidin S synthetase was used ...

Membrane proteins play important roles in health and disease, but they are so hydrophobic that they require detergents to maintain their shape outside membranes. That makes them difficult to study.

Humans possess six forms of the protein actin, which perform essential functions in the body. Two in particular, β-actin and γ-actin, are nearly identical, only differing by four amino acids. Yet ...