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Iterative protein structure-based ligand design has led to a ‘selective’ inhibitor of human non-pancreatic secretory phospholipase A2 which provides a new tool for probing metabolic pathways and may lead to a useful drug.
The structure determination of an anti-tumour antibody in complex with its Lewis Y carbohydrate antigen is a timely reminder of the historical and immunological importance of antibodies against polysaccharides, as well as their potential medical uses as diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines.
A new structure of a plant lectin-saccharide complex shows how this protein presents a high density of sugar-binding sites. Comparison with other lectin structures reveals some emerging patterns in the arrangements of multiple ligand-binding sites in various lectin families.
Application of the double autocorrelation technique to the published nucleosome database allows the periodical distribution of CC and AA dinucleotides along the nucleosomal DNA to be seen; periods of CC and AA distributions are clearly visualized at about 10 base pairs.
