The Protein Society announces its Protein Science 2023 Best Paper recipients

Protein Science Journal

2024-06-13

(Press-News.org) LOS ANGELES, CA

The Protein Society is proud to announce that the winners of the 2023 Protein Science Best Paper awards are Evan T. Liechty from the University of Colorado, USA, and Sophie Rizzo, from Lehigh University, USA.

Evan T. Liechty

Protein Science 2023 August;32(8):e4719.doi:10.1002/pro.4719

Analysis of neutral mutational drift in an allosteric enzyme

Evan T. Liechty1, Andrew Hren1, Levi Kramer1, Gregory Donovan1, Anika J. Friedman1, Michael R. Shirts1, Jerome M. Fox1

1Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

PMID: 37402140 PMC10364584 DOI: 10.1002/pro.4719

Evan T. Liechty is a graduate student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA. This study uses a synthetic transcriptional circuit to study neutral drift in protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B), a mammalian signaling enzyme for which conformational changes are rate limiting. Findings indicate that the positional dependence of neutral mutations within drifting populations can reveal the presence of allosteric networks and illustrate an approach for using synthetic transcriptional systems to explore these mutations in regulatory enzymes.

His mentor, Dr. Jerome M. Fox, shared: "Evan leads from the bench, pushing experiments forward in focused bursts of creative productivity. In this work, he combined a broad set of biophysical analyses to explore neutral mutational drift in an enzyme beholden to the limits of its own flexibility. His findings have seeded ongoing work on protein allostery."

Sophie Rizzo

Protein Sci. 2023 Sep;32(9):e4742. DOI: 10.1002/pro.4742.

Promoting the activity of a receptor tyrosine phosphatase with a novel pH-responsive transmembrane agonist inhibits cancer-associated phenotypes

Sophie Rizzo1, Eden Sikorski1, Soohyung Park2, Wonpil Im 1 2, Victor Vasquez-Montes3, Alexey S Ladokhin3, Damien Thévenin1

1Department of Chemistry, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA.

2Department of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA.

3Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas, USA.

PMID: 37515426 PMCID: PMC10461461 DOI: 10.1002/pro.4742

Sophie Rizzo is a graduate student in the Department of Chemistry, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. This study designed and tested a series of first-in-class pH-responsive transmembrane (TM) peptide agonists of protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor J (PTPRJ) that are soluble in aqueous solution but insert as a helical TM domain in lipid membranes when the pH is lowered to match that of the acidic microenvironment of tumors. Developing tumor-selective and TM-targeting peptide binders of critical receptor protein tyrosine phosphatases (RPTPs) could afford a potentially transformative approach to studying RPTP's selectivity mechanism without requiring less specific inhibitors and represent a novel class of therapeutics against receptor protein tyrosine kinase-driven cancers.

Her mentor, Dr. Damien Thévenin, shared: "From day one, Sophie has shown remarkable determination and rigor in her research. No matter how challenging the problem, Sophie never gives up and always finds a way to push forward. Winning a 2023 Protein Science Best Paper award is a well-deserved recognition of her hard work and innovative thinking. Her contributions have enriched our group and set a remarkable example for her peers to follow. I’m thrilled for her and can’t wait to see the amazing things she’ll accomplish next."

# # #

The Protein Society is the leading international Society devoted to furthering research and development in protein science. Founded in 1986, the purpose of the Society is to provide international forums to facilitate communication, cooperation, and collaboration regarding all aspects of the study of proteins. In support of these goals, the Society publishes Protein Science, the premier journal in the field, hosts an annual international symposium, and facilitates the education of early-career protein scientists across all lines of discipline. The Protein Society members represent a wide spectrum of academic, industry, government, and non-profit institutions from more than 40 countries around the world. Media inquiries can be directed to

Delegates, exhibitors, sponsors, and the press can learn more about the 38th Anniversary Symposium on The Protein Society website http://www.proteinsociety.org.

Raluca Cadar, Chief Executive Officer at 844.377.6834

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

A conservation market could incentivize global ocean protection

2024-06-13

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The countries of the world agreed: Our planet needs more protection from human activity. And with the globe facing an assortment of environmental crises, they realized the plan needed to be ambitious. Thirty-by-thirty was their proposal: protect 30% of the planet by 2030. But while conservation is popular in principle, the costs of actually enacting it often stall even the most earnest efforts. Three researchers at UC Santa Barbara have proposed a market-based approach to achieving the 30x30 targets in the ocean. They tested whether a system that allowed countries to trade conservation ...

New fabric makes urban heat islands more bearable

2024-06-13

This year has already seen massive heatwaves around the globe, with cities in Mexico, India, Pakistan and Oman hitting temperatures near or past 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). As global temperatures and urban populations rise, the world’s cities have become “urban heat islands,” with tight-packed conditions and thermal radiation emitting from pavement and skyscraper trapping and magnifying these temperatures. With 68 percent of all people predicted to live in cities by 2050, this is a growing, ...

Public more confident connecting increasing heat, wildfires with climate change than other extreme weather events, study finds

2024-06-13

Oregon State University researchers found that U.S. adults are fairly confident in linking wildfires and heat to climate change, but less confident when it comes to other extreme weather events like hurricanes, flooding or tornadoes. The recent study found that politics and personal experience played significant roles in people’s responses: Self-identified Republicans were less likely than Democrats to attribute extreme weather events to climate change, though Republicans who had personally experienced negative impacts from extreme weather events were more likely to link them to climate change than those who hadn’t. Looking at ...

Marine heatwaves devastate red gorgonians in the Medes Islands

2024-06-13

The increase in the frequency and intensity of marine heatwaves in recent decades is one of the effects of global climate change. A study by the University of Barcelona, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, shows that the extreme heatwave of 2022 caused an “unprecedented” increase in mortality of the red gorgonian Paramuricea clavata, affecting 70% of the colonies located in the Montgrí Natural Park, the Medes Islands and the Baix Ter. According to the researchers, these results are “alarming ...

Only one in 20 therapies tested in animals reach approval for human use

2024-06-13

An analysis of reviews of translational biomedical research reveals that just 5% of therapies tested in animals reach regulatory approval for human use. The study, an umbrella review, published June 13th in the open access journal PLOS Biology, summarizes other systematic reviews and provides high level evidence that while the rate of translation to human studies is 50%, there is steep drop off before final approval. The authors argue that improved robustness and generalizability of experimental approaches could help increase the chances of translation and final approval. Animal studies are used in basic research ...

Antimalarial compounds show promise to relieve polycystic ovary syndrome

2024-06-13

Plant-derived compounds best known for their antimalarial properties relieve polycystic ovary syndrome, a major public health problem that affects millions of women worldwide. These compounds, called artemisinins, achieve their affect by suppressing ovarian androgen production in multiple rodent models as well as in a small cohort of human patients, according to a new study. The findings not only underscore the versatility of artemisinins but reveal a promising new approach for preventing and treating the disorder. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common ...

Canine companions are indicators of human health, but more canine data is needed

2024-06-13

In a Perspective, Courtney Sexton and Audrey Ruple discuss how companion animals, especially dogs, are distinctly positioned to be sentinels of human health due to the environments they and humans closely share, but, say the authors, systems for improving data capture around dogs’ environments are critically needed. Humans share their environments closely with companion animals, leading to similar health risks such as respiratory illnesses, cancers, and cognitive dysfunction. Dogs, having cohabitated with humans for about 30,000 years, are particularly well-suited ...

Novel platform enables unprecedented imaging of the human brain

2024-06-13

A new platform enables simultaneous capture of protein expression, cellular morphology, neural projection, and synapse distribution in large-scale human brain tissues at multiple scales, researchers report. The system ensures the preservation of cellular architecture while enabling detailed imaging and analysis of large human brain tissue samples at unprecedented resolution and speed. The authors demonstrated its utility by processing whole human brain hemispheres to reveal pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease tissue. “We envision that this scalable technology platform will ...

Technologies enable 3D imaging of whole human brain hemispheres at subcellular resolution

2024-06-13

Observing anything and everything within the human brain, no matter how large or small while it is fully intact, has been an out-of-reach dream of neuroscience for decades, but in a new study in Science, an MIT-based team describes a technology pipeline that enabled them to finely process, richly label and sharply image full hemispheres of the brains of two donors—one with Alzheimer’s and one without—at high resolution and speed. “We performed holistic imaging of human brain tissues at multiple resolutions ...

Modifying genomes of tardigrades to unravel their secrets

2024-06-13

Some species of tardigrades are highly and unusually resilient to various extreme conditions fatal to most other forms of life. The genetic basis for these exceptional abilities remains elusive. For the first time, researchers from the University of Tokyo successfully edited genes using the CRISPR technique in a highly resilient tardigrade species previously impossible to study with genome-editing tools. The successful delivery of CRISPR to an asexual tardigrade species directly produces gene-edited offspring. The design and ...

The Protein Society announces its Protein Science 2023 Best Paper recipients

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: