RNA Polymerase Collision versus DNA Structural Distortion: Twists and Turns Can Cause Break Failure

Twists and turns

Computational modelling of the heart tube during development reveals the interplay between tissue asymmetry and growth that helps our hearts take shape.

Regulation of Plexin: A Ring of Structural Twists and Turns

The regulation of the guidance receptor plexin is incompletely understood. In this issue, Kong et al. (2016) present crystal structures of the full-length extracellular region of class A plexins, revealing its dual role in both autoinhibition and activation.

Twists and turns in protein folding

to make the best possible use of the bounty of genome information that is becoming available at an ever increasing pace. If only one could feed each new sequence into a computer and let it wriggle the polypeptide chain about in silico, to see what three-dimensional structure it ends up with, the proteins encoded by the genomes already sequenced would soon become an open book. But sadly, althoug...

The twists and turns of enzyme function.

Structural redesign and stabilization of the overlapping tandem beta-turns of RNA polymerase II.

Peptides representing single repeat units of the carboxy-terminal domain (CTD) of RNA polymerase II (Tyr-Ser-Pro-Thr-Ser-Pro-Ser-Tyr-NH2, 1) contain overlapping Ser-Pro-Xaa-Xaa beta-turn forming sites which permit their overall structure to closely resemble members of the quinoxaline class of antitumor DNA bisintercalators. We have modified this native sequence at the i+2 positions of each beta...