3D Model of Bax Protein Newly Proposed!

The protein Bax is one of great interest to scientist. Bax is one of the proteins responsible for cell death by puncturing holes in the mitochondria of cells. This in turn causes proteins in the organelle to leak into the cytoplasm of the cell, resulting in cell death through apoptosis. Which some may believe this protein to be troublesome, cell death is sometimes needed. Especially in the situation of cancer patients. Cancer is the over multiplication of cells, if there was a way to use this Bax protein against cancer cells, it would greatly revolutionize cancer treatments. The only problem was that until very recently, scientists did not know what Bax exactly looked like. They knew the crystal structure of the truncated core of the domain, but not the full length structure on the protein.

However, scientists at the Freie Universität Berlin, the University of Tubingen, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have developed a 3D model of the Bax protein. With this model, scientists now know how the protein looks and acts. The most significant discovery was that the hairpin at helices 5-6 of the protein form into a clamp-like dimeric structure. This structure is thought to be the mechanism that punctures the mitochondria. The punctures are actually formed by the structure pinching the membrane bilayer. One scientist, Enrica Bordignon, explains how important this discovery is by saying, “If we understand how the Bax protein deforms the membrane and forms pores, we are one step closer to understanding how cells die, and thus one step closer to the development of new cancer drugs which should promote cell death.” If the Bax protein could be better understood and could be used to control the apoptosis of cancer cells, it would be an incredible advancement in the field of cancer treatment research.

Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141121033230.htm