Chemical biology articles within Nature

Featured

  • Article |

    African sleeping sickness, caused by Trypanosoma brucei species, is responsible for some 30,000 human deaths each year. Available treatments are limited by poor efficacy and safety profiles. However, a new molecular target for potential treatments has now been identified. The protein target is T. brucei N-myristoyltransferase. In further experiments, lead compounds have been discovered that inhibit this protein, kill trypanosomes in vitro and in vivo, and can cure trypanosomiasis in mice.

    • Julie A. Frearson
    • , Stephen Brand
    •  & Paul G. Wyatt

  • News Feature |

    Questions about a laboratory assay are making Sirtris, a high-profile biotechnology company, the talking point of the ageing field. Heidi Ledford investigates.

    • Heidi Ledford

  • News & Views |

    At present, only injectable drugs are available for treating multiple sclerosis. So clinical trials indicating that the drug fingolimod might be a step towards an oral treatment for the disease are exciting indeed.

    • Roland Martin

  • News & Views |

    If evolution has had trouble making effective carbohydrate receptors, what hope do humans have of creating synthetic versions? A method for preparing libraries of such receptors boosts the chances of success.

    • Anthony P. Davis

  • Letter |

    The RAS–RAF signalling pathway is an attractive target for drug development in oncology, and several RAF inhibitors are being tested in clinical trials. Here and in an accompanying paper, RAF inhibitors are shown to have opposing roles, functioning as either inhibitors or activators of RAF depending on the cellular context and mutational status of RAF. The mechanistic basis for these opposing roles is dissected. The results have implications for the clinical use of these inhibitors and for the design of kinase inhibitors.

    • Poulikos I. Poulikakos
    • , Chao Zhang
    •  & Neal Rosen

  • Letter |

    UCYN–A is a recently discovered nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium with unusual metabolic features. The complete genome of this uncultivated organism is now presented, revealing a photofermentative metabolism and dependency on other organisms for essential compounds.

    • H. James Tripp
    • , Shellie R. Bench
    •  & Jonathan P. Zehr

  • Letter |

    Worldwide, 170 million people are infected with the hepatitis C virus, which is a significant cause of liver-related illnesses and deaths. Standard treatment combines pegylated interferon alpha and ribavirin (RBV), but has some negative effects, notably RBV-induced haemolytic anaemia. Here, a genome-wide study shows that a deficiency in the enzyme inosine triphosphatase protects against haemolytic anaemia in patients receiving RBV.

    • Jacques Fellay
    • , Alexander J. Thompson
    •  & David B. Goldstein

  • Letter |

    Sequence variations in a 58-kilobase interval on human chromosome 9p21 have been associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease. However, this interval contains no protein-coding genes and the mechanism underlying the increased risk has been unclear. Here, the corresponding interval has been deleted from mouse chromosome 4, revealing that this part of the chromosome regulates the cardiac expression of two nearby genes, Cdkn2a and Cdkn2b, and the proliferation dynamics of vascular cells.

    • Axel Visel
    • , Yiwen Zhu
    •  & Len A. Pennacchio

  • News & Views |

    When environmental temperatures rise, plants seek help from their core molecular mechanisms to adapt. The chromatin protein H2A.Z, which regulates gene expression, is one such rescue molecule.

    • Roger B. Deal
    •  & Steven Henikoff

  • Letter |

    Although new amino acids with desirable properties can be devised, only a few have been successfully introduced into proteins by the cellular machinery. Even then, only one type of unnatural amino acid can be added to a given protein. Here, a new system has been designed that could allow the incorporation of up to 200 novel amino acids. The system involves an orthogonal ribosome that uses quadruplet — rather than triplet — codons, as well as orthogonal tRNA synthetase–tRNA pairs.

    • Heinz Neumann
    • , Kaihang Wang
    •  & Jason W. Chin

  • News & Views |

    Chronic drug use can lead to addiction, which is initiated by specific brain circuits. The mystery of how one class of drugs, the benzodiazepines, affects activity in this circuitry has finally been solved.

    • Arthur C. Riegel
    •  & Peter W. Kalivas

  • Letter |

    The RAS–RAF signalling pathway is an attractive target for drug development in oncology, and several RAF inhibitors are being tested in clinical trials. Here and in an accompanying paper, RAF inhibitors are shown to have opposing roles, functioning as either inhibitors or activators of RAF depending on the cellular context and mutational status of RAF. The mechanistic basis for these opposing roles is dissected. The results have implications for the clinical use of these inhibitors and for the design of kinase inhibitors.

    • Georgia Hatzivassiliou
    • , Kyung Song
    •  & Shiva Malek

  • Article |

    The integrase protein of retroviruses such as HIV-1 catalyses insertion of the viral genome into that of the host. Here, the long-awaited structure of the full-length integrase complex is predicted, revealing not only details of the biochemistry of the integration reaction, but also the means by which current inhibitors affect this process.

    • Stephen Hare
    • , Saumya Shree Gupta
    •  & Peter Cherepanov

  • Letter |

    The amino acid antiporter AdiC is important for the survival of enteric bacteria such as Escherichia coli in extremely acid environments. Although the structure of substrate-free AdiC is known, how the substrate (arginine or agmatine) is recognized and transported by AdiC remains unclear. The crystal structure of an E. coli AdiC variant bound to arginine is now reported and analysed.

    • Xiang Gao
    • , Lijun Zhou
    •  & Yigong Shi

  • Article |

    GNF-2 is a recently discovered, selective allosteric Bcr–Abl inhibitor. Solution NMR, X-ray crystallography, mutagenesis and hydrogen exchange mass spectrometry are now used to show that GNF-2 binds to the myristate-binding site of Abl, leading to changes in the structural dynamics of the ATP-binding site. The results show that the combination of allosteric and ATP-competitive inhibitors can overcome resistance to either agent alone.

    • Jianming Zhang
    • , Francisco J. Adrián
    •  & Nathanael S. Gray

  • Letter |

    G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) mediate the majority of cellular responses to hormones and neurotransmitters and are the largest group of therapeutic targets for a range of diseases. The extracellular surface (ECS) of GPCRs is diverse and therefore an ideal target for the discovery of subtype-selective drugs. Here, NMR spectroscopy is used to investigate ligand-specific conformational changes around a central structural feature in the ECS of a GPCR.

    • Michael P. Bokoch
    • , Yaozhong Zou
    •  & Brian K. Kobilka

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Chemical biology across other nature.com journals