How cells take out the trash—phosphoarginine deciphered
Friday, October 7, 2016 - 07:31
in Biology & Nature
Cells never forget to take out the trash. It has long been known that cells tag proteins for degradation by labelling them with ubiquitin, a signal described as "the molecular kiss of death". Tim Clausen's group at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna identified an analogous system in gram-positive bacteria, where the role of a degradation tag is fulfilled by a little known post-translational modification: arginine phosphorylation. The discovery, which is published online by the journal Nature, opens new avenues for designing antibacterial therapies.