What is it about?
Septins are proteins which form filaments and aid in cell division. In order to do so they must interact with membranes. But how is this controlled? In this work, we show how binding and cleaving an important intracellular molecule, called GTP, the association of the filament to the membrane may be regulated.
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Why is it important?
Septin filaments are involved in essential cellular processes and disease. Fully understanding how septin filaments assemble may be relevant to explaining the phenomenon of microcephaly in Zika infected infants since the Zika protease is believed to cleave a specific septin molecule.
Perspectives
Hopefully our work will stimulate other studies with a view to fully elucidating the structure and dynamics of septin filaments and higher order assemblies. Hopefully the hypothesis can be directly tested in the near future using electron microscopy.
RICHARD GARRATT
SAO CARLOS PHYSICS INSTITUTE
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A complete compendium of crystal structures for the human SEPT3 subgroup reveals functional plasticity at a specific septin interface, IUCrJ, March 2020, International Union of Crystallography,
DOI: 10.1107/s2052252520002973.
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