Fungus offers insight into human cells
9 Sep 2011 by Evoluted New Media
A heat-loving fungus could help researchers understand structures within our own cells and a team from Germany has become the first to sequence its genome and determine the structure of its nuclear pore.
A heat-loving fungus could help researchers understand structures within our own cells and a team from Germany has become the first to sequence its genome and determine the structure of its nuclear pore. Researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and Heidelberg University have sequenced and analysed the genome of the fungus Chaetomium thermophilum and used that information to determine the three dimensional structure of the inner ring of the nuclear pore.
The fungus lives in soil, dung and compost heaps at temperatures up to 60°C. This means proteins – including some which are very similar to our own – have to be very stable.
“There are a number of structures that we couldn’t study before, because they are too unstable in organisms that live at more moderate temperatures,” said Peer Bork, who led the genome analysis at EMBL. “Now with this heat loving fungus, we can.”
Scientists compared the fungus’ genome and proteome to those of other eukaryotes and identified proteins that make up the inner most ring on the nuclear pore – the channel that controls what enters and exits the cell nucleus. Once they had identified the relevant building blocks, researchers were also able to determine the complex three dimensional structure of this inner ring for the first time.
“This work shows the power of interdisciplinary collaborations,” said Ed Hurt, who led the structure and biochemical analysis at Heidelberg.
“The nuclear pore is an intricate biological puzzle, but by combining bioinformatics with biochemistry and structural biology, we were able to solve this piece of it for the first time.”
The genome and proteome have been made publically available, and researchers hope it will prove valuable for other studying other eukaryotic structures and their interactions, as well as general adaptations to life in hot places. They hope the research – which is published in Cell – could lead to new biotechnology applications.
