Bacterial protein caught in the act of secreting sticky appendages
Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - 12:00
in Biology & Nature
New atomic-level "snapshots" published in the June 2, 2011, issue of Nature reveal details of how bacteria such as E. coli produce and secrete sticky appendages called pili, which help the microbes attach to and infect human cells. "These crystal structures unravel a complex choreography of protein-protein interactions that will aid in the design of new antibacterial drugs," said Huilin Li, a biophysicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and a professor at Stony Brook University, who participated in the research with a number of collaborators in the U.S. and in Europe.
