Structure Reveals How Cells ‘Sugar-Coat’ Proteins

Biologists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and the University of Wurzburg, Germany, have deciphered the structure of a large protein complex responsible for adding sugar molecules to newly formed proteins - a process essential to many proteins’ functions. The structure offers insight into the molecular “sugar-coating” mechanism, and may help scientists better understand a variety of diseases that result when the process goes awry.

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Filed under: Biology on March 14th, 2008