SEEING PROTEINS INSIDE CELLS

Abstract

IN-CELL nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) offers great promise for studying proteins in their natural biological environment—the cell. Two research groups in Japan have now boosted the method’s prospects by using it to obtain the structure of an in-cell protein and to study proteins in mammalian somatic cells, both for the first time. The studies could open the door to a broader understanding of how proteins perform their biological functions inside cells, in both health and disease. Volker Dotsch, now at the University of Frankfurt, and coworkers developed in-cell NMR as a way to study proteins at work ( J.Am.Chem.Soc. 2001, 123 , 2446). A wide range of studies have since been carried out on the conformations, dynamic motions, and binding interactions of in-cell proteins. But no one has been able to obtain NMR spectra of proteins in mammalian somatic cells or solve the NMR structure of an in-cell protein. Yutaka Ito of ...