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Cell biology

Border crossing

Nature volume 433, pages 367–369 (2005)Cite this article

The ‘translocon’ complex, which determines whether a protein segment will be inserted into or pushed through the cell membrane, seems to make the decision by performing a thermodynamic measurement.

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Figure 1: Membrane regions and preferred amino-acid locations.
Figure 2: A possible scheme for the membrane-insertion decision, as proposed by Hessa et al.1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Molecular Biology Institute, and the UCLA-DOE Laboratory of Genomics and Proteomics, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095-1570, California, USA

    James U. Bowie

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  1. James U. Bowie
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Bowie, J. Border crossing. Nature 433, 367–369 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/433367a

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