Monday, February 5, 2018

Interactomics with crosslinking reveals new complexity in mitochondria!!


THIS.STUDY.IS.AWESOME.

You can check it out here in case I get all rambly about it. Some little voice in the back of my head is yelling "you should do some work"



Fortunately, stupid voice, this is what I do now!! I'm waiting on PD to tell me some stuff about mitochondrial complexes (in another organism) and this study that reveals more than every other paper I've read on protein-protein interactions in mitochondrial membrane in the last week combined is something I should 1) study and 2) writing about it helps me to better understand it.

Mitochondria look surprisingly like anaerobic bacteria and most of what we know about them are things we've extrapolated from studies on bacteria. They're easier to grow in bulk and to get pure cultures of -- unless I'm reading way too much into this beautiful work it looks like we've made a few too many assumptions about the similarity of the two. The regulation is much more complicated in mitochondria than in their distant cousins still growing on the bottoms of the ocean and stuff. Or -- probably even cooler -- we've oversimplified the bacteria respiratory process as well.

To do this study they enrich the mitochondrial complexes post-crosslinking in the protein native states. What do we see? Tons and tons of interplay!  Just a reminder -- protein crosslinking is about 100x easier to do these days than it was even 2 years ago thanks to massive improvements in both (troth?)  the reagents, instrument methods, and bioinformatics tools.  All of this was put to the test in this study and opened a new door on our understanding of how well characterized organelles actually work.

I approve of this study at almost the same level as these idiots seem to approve of the new Serta dog bed someone got them for Xmas....some other dog beds in this room labeled....


...I may see if I can get anything from Serta for this endorsement....

2 comments:

  1. So glad you enjoyed this work! Let me know if I can help with your plant studies :)

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  2. Agreed, I can personally attest to things being 100x harder 2 years before the publication came out!!!

    ReplyDelete