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IMAGE: A team led by Nevan Krogan at Gladstone and UCSF has demonstrated that a large-scale and systematic genetic approach can indeed yield reliable and detailed information on the structure of. view more
Credit: QBI, UCSF
SAN FRANCISCO, CA December 10, 2020 One of biologists most vexing tasks is figuring out how proteins, the molecules that carry the brunt of a cell s work, do their job. Each protein has a variety of knobs, folds, and clefts on its surface that dictate what it can do. Scientists can visualize these features fairly easily on individual proteins. But proteins don t act alone, and scientists also need to know the shape and composition the structure, as they call it of the complexes that proteins form when working together.