A Berlin researcher cooperative succeeded in clarifying functional details of the dynamin molecule.
In the researcher cooperative the Institute of Crystallography at the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) for Molecular Medicine, the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Institute of Mathematics of the Free University of Berlin (FU) as well as the Institute for Medical Physics and Biophysics at the Charité Berlin were involved. The research group of the MDC, for example succeeded in getting a large number of images from the molecular fine structure of the dynamin molecule. With the help of the working group "Computational Molecular Biology" at the FU Berlin led by the mathematician Dr. Frank Noe, and his colleagues in the research project MATHEON, these static images could be set in motion by a computer simulation thus clarifying a very important functional mechanism in the field of neurotoxicology.
Dynamin is an enzyme involved in the transport of hormones and nutrients which are released by filled blisters (vesicles) in the cells (endocytosis). The vesicles invaginates from the cell membrane to enclose hormones or nutrients. During the invagination there is a neck constists of membrane material onto which the dynamin molecule docks with its spiral structure. By stretching the spiral it becomes narrowed at the same time thus separating the vesicle from the membrane “neck”. Previously unknown molecular details of the dynamin´s function during the vesicle separation could be clarified. Primarily the researchers focused on the process involved in the severing of the neck of the vesicle.
Dynamin is an important molecule that is affected by the toxic effects of substances: neurotoxins can dusturb the transmission of a nerve stimulus at the synaptic cleft by interfering the dynamin´s function thus disturbing the communication of nerve cells in general. In order to clarify the exact process computer simulations are very helpful, as they realised by the working group "Computational Molecular Biology" of the FU Berlin: a research goal of the group is, among other things, to develop more efficient mathematical and computational methods for simulation and modeling of biomolecules.
With its systemic approach the research has potential in the field of toxicology, for example, as an complement element to in vitro methods replacing animal testing procedures. In medicine the work is also important because in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer´s the uptake of vesicles in the nerve cells is disturbed, too.
New: Computational Molecular Biology by Dr. Frank Noe is now represented in our InVitroJobs working group list.
Source (in German): http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/weg_zelle_190514.html
For more information: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7366/full/nature10369.html
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