I haven't posted here for a long time, so I decided to summarize a little of membrane structural biology over the last few months.
By far the most exciting advancements have occurred in the field of GPCRs. The Stevens group at The Scripps Research Institute (who also published the adrenoceptor structure mentioned a few posts ago) published a new structure of the same receptor, but with a different antagonist (3D4S). In this structure, a cholesterol molecule was observed in a slightly different location from in the previous one, which led to the discovery of a putative cholesterol recognition motif. Also, Schertler and colleagues at the MRC laboratory in Cambridge solved the structure of the turkey beta1 adrenoceptor with yet a third antagonist (2VT4).
