e体育官网:Maojun Yang’s Group Published the Structure of Respirasome on Cell
On December 1st, Professor Yang’s group from the School of Life Science, Tsinghua University published an article entitled Structure of mammalian respiratory supercomplex I1III2IV1 on Cell, reporting for the first time the atomic resolution cryo-EM structure of mammalian respirasome (1). The current work is a breakthrough by Prof. Yang in this area, after reporting the medium-high resolution structure of respirasome (2) in Nature on September 21st, 2016.
On December 2nd, Professor Yang’s group held a news conference in Rom Building presenting their important results. Honored guests included Guowei Sang, Zihe Rao, Linfang Wang, Haidong Wu, Zhe Yang, Shuxia Gu, Dong Liu, Yijun Qi, Xinquan Wang and Hongwei Wang (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Honored guests
In the latest paper, through optimizing the protein purification procedure and data processing method, Professor Yang’s group successfully pushed the resolution to 3.6 angstrom which subsequently revealed the detailed interaction between subunits in CI, identified the linking subunits between CI, CIII and CIV, discovered the critical role of lipid molecules in the structure of respirasome, and presented a new electron transfer model. This achievement enables us to deeply understand the organization of mammalian respiratory chain and the mechanism of proton pumping and electron transfer, and provides critical information in treating cellular-respiration related diseases.
Respiration is one of the most fundamental biological process in all living organisms. Dysfunction of mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes generates reactive oxygen or nitrogen species, and this type of dysfunction is implicated in many human diseases1–3, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, multiple sclerosis, Friedreich’s ataxia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As such the respiratory chain is always a topic in structu