Protein Structural Landscapes: From Structure to Function through Correlative Structural Biology

Dear Colleagues,

The determination of the structure of proteins is crucial to discovering how these biomolecules work. Detailed structures may not only unravel how a protein interacts with other structures, but also how cells work in reality. The process of determining a precise molecular structure can be very long and difficult. As of today, the most common route for determining a protein’s structure is to crystallize it and determine its 3D structure from its X-ray diffraction data. Nevertheless, these images of the protein do not fully represent how the protein really looks, as it is in fact dynamic and more indistinct. Moreover, some proteins are very hard if not impossible to crystallize.

Other methods, such as solution or solid-state NMR, cryo-electron microscopy, electron tomography or mass spectroscopy, provide different points of view of proteins at different scales. The integration of the structural data derived from such different technologies helps our understanding of how proteins, protein complexes or whole pathogens interact dynamically with their functional environment. This fundamental understanding will in turn allow us to provide new therapeutics to tackle the main challenges of a continuously ageing society, public health and global pandemics.

This Special Issue will therefore welcome (but is not limited to) papers dealing with an integration of the abovementioned techniques and showing a synergistic approach to biological problems; all of this within the more comprehensive frame of addressing human pathologies along with the elucidation of cellular processes.

Dr. Vito Calderone
Guest Editor

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