Highlights

Olfaction is critical for insects but it is also of interest in human and animal health as target for repellents strategy, especially against biting insects or for pheromone traps against pests. In winged insects, olfactory receptors (OR) form complexes composed of odorant-binding subunits (ORx) and with odorant receptor co-receptor subunits (Orco). These subunits have evolved in opposite directions, with a large divergence of the OR subunits for recognizing various ligands, while the Orco (...)

Lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) is a key metabolic enzyme. In eukaryotes, and in humans in particular, it contributes to the maintenance of an essential metabolic pathway, glycolysis, in the event of anaerobic stress. It is also involved in cell-to-cell communication mechanisms. These include interactions between healthy and cancerous cells and communication between neurons. In fact, it is one of the most studied enzymes. Structurally, human LDHs can be distinguished from their bacterial (...)

De novo lipogenesis (DNL) is the metabolic pathway primarily utilized by the liver and adipose tissue to synthesize fatty acids from excess carbohydrates. An increased rate of DNL is observed in many characteristically "Western" diseases of affluence, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Metabolic changes can lead to an altered expression of DNL genes through the acetylation of histones, the proteins that package DNA, but the molecular details remain poorly understood. A (...)

Compared to X-ray crystallography, electron crystallography can be performed on nanometer-sized crystals and can provide additional information, such as ion valency, from the resulting Coulomb potential map (Acta Cryst. D 2021, 77, 75- 85). Although electron crystallography has successfully resolved three-dimensional protein structures from vitrified crystals, its widespread use as a structural biology tool is limited. One of the reasons for this is the fragility of these crystals, which (...)

Photoconvertible fluorescent proteins (PCFPs) such as mEos4b change their fluorescence color from green to red upon illumination with UV light. They are popular markers for super-resolution imaging modalities such as quantitative and single particle tracking Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (SMLM). The photophysical properties of these proteins, however, are exceedingly complex. In this collaborative work involving the NMR and I2SR groups of the IBS, researchers observed by (...)

Channelrhodopsins are light-activated ion channels found in microbes. Although their roles often remain enigmatic, they are widely used in optogenetics to photocontrol specific neurons in higher organisms. Widely distributed in microorganisms, they are also encoded in the genomes of giant viruses infecting phytoplankton, where their function is not established. The Channels team of the Membrane Transporters Group (IBS/MEMBRANE) examined the properties of viral channelrhodopsins type 1 (...)