G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a large receptor protein family that sense molecules outside the cell and activate intracellular signal transduction pathways and modulate cellular responses. Since they are activated by extracellular stimuli of varied size and nature such as light, odors, hormones, and neurotransmitters, these receptors are extremely important therapeutic targets. Over...
New therapeutic modalities, such as RNA-based drugs, have shown promising results in treating diseases that are currently difficult to tackle with standard small molecule drugs. One type of RNA therapeutic, mRNA, is especially promising due to its ability to induce protein production in target cells, where it can replace damaged or missing proteins. However, clinical progress is often limited...
Lipid bilayers and lipid-associated proteins play a crucial role in biology. Since studies and manipulation in vivo are inherently challenging, several in vitro membrane-mimetic systems have been developed to enable the study of lipidic phases, lipid-protein interactions and membrane protein function. Controlling the size and shape or introducing functional elements in a programmable way is,...
Bacterial resistance is presently a major public health concern, due to excessive and misuse of antibiotics. This has stressed the research on new antibiotics with new mechanisms of action [1]. Antimicrobial peptides are part of our innate immune system and represent a new antibiotic paradigm, as they aim the bacterial membrane, have been studied in the past decade [2]. Within this research...
