Volume 17 Issue 10, October 2021

Current antibody discovery technologies are limited in terms of their efficacy, accessibility, and scalability. The AHEAD system addresses these limitations by presenting an accelerated evolution workflow for antibody engineering that combines autonomous gene diversification with protein display technology.

A rationally designed class of mTORC1 inhibitors combines the selectivity of rapamycin with the potency of mTOR kinase inhibitors.

The structure of a giant ubiquitin E3 ligase sheds light on its activation in a substrate-dependent manner and shows how a single E3 enzyme uses distinct recognition modules to confer substrate specificity.

Escherichia coli are a common component of the human microbiota, producing a diverse collection of small molecules that regulate intra- and interspecies interactions, including those with other microorganisms and with the host.

This Review highlights the latest progress on the molecular basis of metabolite signals in regulating aging and longevity, as well as state-of-the-art technological advances in studying bioactive metabolites.

Decades of research have identified the biochemical basis of many plant specialized metabolic pathways. This Review highlights the biological context of these pathways and how recent advances have extended the new frontiers of phytochemistry.

This Review article explores how uncovering phenotypes linked to the human microbiome often progresses from correlative studies to studies in germ-free animals and fecal microbiota transplants and, finally, to identification of strains and molecules.

Autonomous hypermutation yeast surface display (AHEAD) mimics the process of somatic hypermutation in animals to enable the rapid in vitro evolution of antibodies, including nanobodies targeting the RBD of SARS-CoV-2.

Design of a bivalent inhibitor containing an ATP-competitive moiety and rapamycin-modified FRB binding ligand that selectively inhibits mTORC1 results in potent and durable inhibition of 4EBP1 phosphorylation and cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo.

Structures and biochemistry reveal how covalent linkage of a ubiquitin-like protein elicits protein–protein interactions indirectly. NEDD8 allosterically activates CUL5-RBX2 cullin-RING E3 binding to the ARIH2 RBR-type E3 for joint ubiquitylation.

The full-length structure of HUWE1 reveals the bipartite organization of a giant E3 ubiquitin ligase, comprising a catalytic HECT domain and a large, ring-shaped scaffold that provides docking sites for various substrates and regulates E3 activity.

Approximately half of lipoproteins destined to the Escherichia coli outer membrane display intrinsically disordered linker peptides at their N termini, which are required for optimal trafficking by the Lol lipoprotein sorting system.

Structures of three cyanophycin synthetases reveal how the constituent glutathione synthetase and muramyl ligase-like domains cooperate to make cyanophycin, a poly-aspartate chain with arginine residues attached to the sidechains by isopeptide bonds.