New light has been shed on programmed death receptor ligand-1 (PD-L1) and how its intracellular signaling affects immune suppression and cancer progression. A team from the University of Colorado School of Medicine studied the interactome, or group of proteins with which the intracellular domain of PD-L1 interacts. They found that…

Artificial intelligence was used to map out hundreds of ways that the virus that causes COVID-19 interacts with infected cells. Through this analysis, a Cleveland Clinic-led research team searched thousands of drugs already approved by the FDA for their potential against COVID-19. This study built on existing data by employing…

Research led by the University of Toronto has identified a large group of proteins that interact with the function of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein. The researchers think their findings could clarify why some patients with the inherited condition cystic fibrosis, caused by mutations in the CFTR…

The “tau interactome” has been mapped by researchers at the Buck Institute and collaborators, uncovering new findings about the role of tau in neurodegenerative disease. Using proteomics, these scientists found that mutant tau impacts the function of mitochondria in human neurons. They also suggest a mechanism for how diseased tau…

William Haseltine It is becoming increasingly clear that we have misunderstood SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Many people, including some experts in the scientific community, deemed the pandemic over with the release of the mRNA vaccines. The belief—or perhaps it was hope in disguise—was that…

It seems like a slam dunk. Why not repurpose already approved or well-studied drug candidates for conditions where treatments are desperately needed? Wouldn’t that be an easy way to speed up drug development? There are multiple examples where that has been very successful (see Stunning Success Stories). But there are…

A team of scientists in Japan has revealed how elevated tau levels impair signaling between neurons in mouse brains. This may point to new approaches to treating Alzheimer’s disease and other neurologic conditions. The study was published recently in eLife. Alzheimer’s disease causes neurons to die, slowly destroying memory and thinking skills. It’s…

Making meaningful connections between high-throughput molecular data and health implications poses significant challenges, many of them computational. But now a team based at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) in Berlin and at the Institute of Computational Biology of Helmholtz Zentrum München has developed a new algorithm using…

A collaboration between the Justus-Liebig University in Germany and the University of Cambridge has revealed the complex RNA structure of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and investigated how it binds with the host cells to drive infection. Most efforts to produce therapeutics and vaccines are targeting viral proteins of SARS-CoV-2, such as…

Almost a decade in the making, the largest human protein map is now available thanks to a joint effort involving over 80 researchers in the United States, Canada, Spain, Belgium, France and Israel.  The map represents all of the known interactions between gene-encoded proteins. Known as the Human Reference Protein…

Researchers at the Norwich, U.K.-based Genome Analysis Center (TGAC) say they have developed a unique bioinformatics approach for identifying associations between molecules from a range of vast data sources. Their report (“ONION: Functional Approach for Integration of Lipidomics and Transcriptomics Data”), published in PLOS1, described studies that focused on measuring…