Institute of
bioorganic chemistry

One of the challenging tasks of Duplodnaviria taxonomy is the classification of high-ranked taxa, including families and orders. In this study, the team of scientists from the Laboratory of molecular bioengineering IBCh RAS in collaboration with the colleagues from the Limnological Institute analized the evolutionary relationships of conserved viral proteins, representing different viruses, including all classified Duplodnaviria families, using AlphaFold modelling. This analysis has been undertaken using structural comparisons and different phylogenetic methods. The results of the analyses mainly indicated the high quality of AlphaFold modelling and the possibility of using the AlphaFold predictions, together with other methods, for the reconstruction of the evolutionary relationships between distant viral groups. The results are publushed in the Biomolecules journal. Learn more

Neuronal oxidative stress accompanies numerous brain pathologies, including aging-related dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, the most common neurodegenerative disorder of the elderly population. Although a causative role of neuronal oxidative stress in the development of cognitive aging and neurodegeneration is widely accepted, it has not yet been sufficiently proven, primarily because of the lack of tools for emulating isolated oxidative stress. Here, the members of the redox biology group and the Laboratory of molecular technologies from the Department of Metabolism and Redox Biology, IBCH RAS, in the collaboration with colleagues from Federal Center of Brain Research and Neurotechnologies, Federal Medical Biological Agency, and Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University chemogenetically created isolated oxidative stress in individual neurons and revealed that it reduces long-term potentiation, a form of the cell memory. The observations allow for linking intraneuronal oxidative stress with learning and memory deficit. The work is published in the Redox Biology. Learn more

A group of scientists from the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology of the IBCh RAS, GPI RAS and a several other scientific Institutes investigated biotransformation of magnetic nanoparticles in the body and the effect of this process both on the metabolism of the iron and on reducing the contrast properties of nanoparticles during imaging. For a long time, it remained unclear what happens in the long term with nanoparticle contrasts for MRI after their distribution in tissues. In addition, magnetic particle biodegradation is accompanied by abundant release of iron ions, which can cause toxic effects. A recent study published in the high-ranking Journal of Nanobiotechnology clarified these issues. Learn more

In a new work, the researches of the Laboratory of Bioengineering of Neuroreceptors and Neuromodulators, the Laboratory of Structural Biology of Ion Channels, the Group for Analysis of the Structure of Membrane Proteins in Silico, and Laboratory of Biomolecular Modeling of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, together with the researches of the National Research Center «Kurchatov Institute», Institute of Biomedical Chemistry, and Lomonosov Moscow State University using α-bungarotoxin (classical three-finger α-neurotoxin with high affinity to α7-nAChR), we showed applicability of cryo-EM to study interactions of α7-nAChR extracellular ligand-binding domain (α7-ECD) with its ligands, despite the proximity of the size of the complex to the lower limit of the sizes of biomolecules available for study by this method of structural biology. The study is published in the Communications Biology. Learn more

A team of scientists from the Laboratory of comparative and functional genomics of IBCh RAS in collaboration with researchers from Universities of Stanford and Oxford, as wells as Washington University of St. Louis described structure and peptide motif recognized by T cell receptors (TCRs) associated with ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Structural analysis of TCRpMHC complexes allowed to identify shared binding motif present in both self-antigens and microbial antigens that engages AS-related TCRs. These findings support the hypothesis that cross-reactivity between microbial and self-antigens can be considered as a trigger event for pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis. The results of the study have been recently published in Nature. Learn more