Issue 262 / October 2023
Self-Reliant
In times of perplexity, every now and then it is better to deal with things yourself. It can be a time-saver, and sometimes, too, an energy-saver. If faced, say, by an oncoming downpour, it is wiser to run for shelter rather than wait for someone to bring you an umbrella. Such decisions also exist at the cellular level. Take our immune system for instance. When attacked by a virus, our body begins by rapidly firing off a first round of artillery as it awaits further and more complex lines of defence that involve myriads of other factors. It turns out that the use of fast lanes such as these also occur at a far smaller scale. In this light, scientists recently discovered quite an extraordinary protein, known as ophMA, that belongs to the fungus Omphalotus orealius, which methylates its own C-terminal tail instead of depending on another transferase to do the job. The tail is then cleaved and folds into a cyclic peptide, an omphalotin, that has anti-nematode properties. Besides its talent for independence, ophMA also adopts a rare catenane arrangement, very similar to two rings that have been interlocked.
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Protein Spotlight (ISSN 1424-4721) is a monthly review written by the
Swiss-Prot team of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.
Spotlight articles describe a specific protein or family of proteins on an informal tone. |