News

• First crystal structure of bacterial oligopeptidase B in an intermediate state: the roles of the hinge region modification and spermine science news X.27

  Oligopeptidase B (OpB) is a two-domain serine peptidase with trypsin-like substrate specificity. OpB belongs to the prolyl oligopeptidase (POP) family and are found only in bacteria and protozoa. It is known that OpB are pathogenesis factors of protozoan infections and protect bacterial cells from a number of antimicrobial peptides. Nevertheless, they are the least studied representatives of POP, especially bacterial OpB, for which there was a complete lack of structural information. The researches from IBC RAS together with those of NRC Kurchatov Institute and the IBOC of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus managed to obtain crystal structures of bacterial OpB from Serratia proteomaculans (PSP) with a modified hinge region.

• Mambalgin-2 inhibits growth, migration, and invasion of metastatic melanoma cells by targeting the channels containing an asic1a subunit whose up-regulation correlates with poor survival prognosis science news X.16

  Melanoma is aggressive cancer characterized by acidification of extracellular environment. Scientists from the Laboratory of bioengineering of neuromodulators and neuroreceptors IBCh RAS together with colleages from NN Blokhin NMRCO showed for the first time that extracellular media acidification increases proliferation, migration, and invasion of patient-derived metastatic melanoma cells and up-regulates cell-surface expression of acid sensitive channels containing the ASIC1a, α-ENaC, and γ-ENaC subunits. No influence of media acidification on these processes was found in normal keratinocytes.

• Pseudomonas phage MD8: genetic mosaicism and challenges of taxonomic classification of lambdoid bacteriophages science news X.8

  Fundamental questions of the evolution of viral genomes are the most important topic of virological research. As a result of the joint work of virologists from the Laboratory of Molecular Bioengineering of the IBCh RAS and the Limnological Institute of the RAS, a group of bacteriophages of the dangerous pathogen Pseudomonas was identified, the genomes of these bacterial viruses were studied, and it was shown that their formation was greatly influenced by multiple horizontal transfers, which led to pronounced genetic mosaicism. Scientists also put forward hypotheses about the origin of the new group and proposed basic principles for the taxonomic classification of lambdoid phages.

Events