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Thursday, 01 December 2016

Yun-Xing Wang in collaboration with BioXFEL Researchers, publishes new article "Structures of riboswitch RNA reaction states by mix-and-inject XFEL serial crystallography" in Nature. 

 

 

Riboswitches are RNA structural elements generally located in the 5′untranslated region (5′UTR) of mRNA. In the genetic regulation, ligand binding to the aptamer domain of a riboswitch triggers a signal to the downstream expression platform 1,2,3. A complete understanding of the structural basis for this mechanism requires the ability to study structural changes over time. Researchers applied femtosecond X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) pulses to obtain structural measurements from crystals small enough that diffusion of a ligand was timed to initiate a reaction prior to diffraction. Full article available here