Proteins, the work-horse molecules necessary for virtually every human action from breathing to thinking, have proved an almost ghostly presence, daring scientists to fully grasp their structure and behavior.
Now, physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have developed powerful imaging techniques that promise to tell us much more about what proteins are and what they do, how they change shapes and how they work together in a cell.
Such questions go to the heart of our quest to understand diseases and find effective drugs.
"The vast majority of diseases are caused by impairment in some kind of protein function - too much or not enough of a certain protein, or a protein that's not working properly," said Andy Greene, director of the Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the UWM work.
Using X-rays, lasers, powerful microscopes and mathematical equations, the UWM scientists have attacked the task of protein-watching on two fronts, publishing papers in the journals Nature Physics and Nature Photonics.
One group led by Valerica Raicu, an assistant physics professor, has discovered a novel way to eavesdrop on the interactions between one protein and another. These communications between proteins are considered vital to understanding what happens inside a living cell.
A second group, led by Abbas Ourmazd, professor of physics and electrical engineering, has developed what may be a vastly improved method of viewing the atomic structure of a single protein.
