The Conduit Lab published a new review in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology:
Cryo-EM structures of γ-TuRC reveal molecular insights into microtubule nucleation
Abstract:
Microtubules within cells often have 13 protofilaments but are nucleated by multi-protein y-TuRCs complexes that display 14 γ-tubulin molecules. High-resolution cryo-EM structures of γ-TuRCs after nucleation show that these γ-TuRCs ‘close’ during nucleation to display only 13 γ-tubulin molecules for protofilament assembly. This News and Views article highlights how several recent single molecule cryo-EM studies have shown that the process of microtubule nucleation can drive gamma-tubulin ring complexes (g-TuRCs) to change from an open to a closed conformation.