Search Publications
Identification and characterization of a new ensemble of cometary organic molecules
Altwegg, K.; Fuselier, S. A.; Rubin, M. +4 more
In-situ study of comet 1P/Halley during its 1986 apparition revealed a surprising abundance of organic coma species. It remained unclear, whether or not these species originated from polymeric matter. Now, high-resolution mass-spectrometric data collected at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by ESA's Rosetta mission unveil the chemical structure of …
Electromechanical coupling mechanism for activation and inactivation of an HCN channel
Dai, Gucan; Aman, Teresa K.; DiMaio, Frank +1 more
Pacemaker hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide-gated (HCN) ion channels exhibit a reversed voltage-dependent gating, activating by membrane hyperpolarization instead of depolarization. Sea urchin HCN (spHCN) channels also undergo inactivation with hyperpolarization which occurs only in the absence of cyclic nucleotide. Here we applied tra…
Distinct axial and lateral interactions within homologous filaments dictate the signaling specificity and order of the AIM2-ASC inflammasome
Matyszewski, Mariusz; Zheng, Weili; Lueck, Jacob +5 more
Inflammasomes are filamentous signaling platforms integral to innate immunity. Currently, little is known about how these structurally similar filaments recognize and distinguish one another. A cryo-EM structure of the AIM2PYD filament reveals that the architecture of the upstream filament is essentially identical to that of the adaptor…
Structural insights into the mechanism of rhodopsin phosphodiesterase
Ikuta, Tatsuya; Shihoya, Wataru; Sugiura, Masahiro +9 more
Rhodopsin phosphodiesterase (Rh-PDE) is an enzyme rhodopsin belonging to a recently discovered class of microbial rhodopsins with light-dependent enzymatic activity. Rh-PDE consists of the N-terminal rhodopsin domain and C-terminal phosphodiesterase (PDE) domain, connected by 76-residue linker, and hydrolyzes both cAMP and cGMP in a light-dependen…
Dynamic molecular oxygen production in cometary comae
Yao, Yunxi; Giapis, Konstantinos P.
Abundant molecular oxygen was discovered in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Its origin was ascribed to primordial gaseous O2 incorporated into the nucleus during the comet's formation. This thesis was put forward after discounting several O2 production mechanisms in comets, including photolysis and radiolysis of …