How cells dispose of their waste
The "regulatory particle " (in blue) detects the proteins tagged with ubiquitin and prepares them for degradation. The "core particle " (in red) breaks the proteins down into their single components. Defective proteins that are not disposed of by the body can cause diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Biochemistry recently succeeded in revealing the structure of the cellular protein degradation machinery (26S proteasome) by combining different methods of structural biology. The results of collaboration with colleagues from the University of California, San Francisco and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich) represent an important step forward in the investigation of the 26S proteasome. The findings have now been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.