Symmetry breaking in homo-oligomers: the curious case of mega-hemocyanin

Hector Garcia Seisdedos; Avital Steinberg; Emmanuel D Levy

doi:10.1016/j.str.2014.12.006

Symmetry breaking in homo-oligomers: the curious case of mega-hemocyanin

Structure. 2015 Jan 6;23(1):3-5. doi: 10.1016/j.str.2014.12.006.

Authors

Hector Garcia Seisdedos¹, Avital Steinberg¹, Emmanuel D Levy²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
² Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel. Electronic address: emmanuel.levy@weizmann.ac.il.

PMID: 25565100
DOI: 10.1016/j.str.2014.12.006

Abstract

Mega-hemocyanin is a 13.5 MDa oxygen transporter found in snails. It is built from three stacked rings involving ten subunits each. The cryo-EM structure of the complex presented by Gatsogiannis and colleagues in this issue of Structure revealed an unexpected breaking of 5-fold symmetry in the central ring and a nonequivalent packing of the subunits.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Comment

MeSH terms

Animals
Hemocyanins / chemistry*
Hemocyanins / metabolism*
Protein Multimerization*
Snails*

Substances

Hemocyanins