The structure of the protein that won the Nobel Prize in 2021 was first analyzed by Chinese scholars

"Every year when I give lectures, they will say that they will win the Nobel Prize sooner or later

On October 4th, the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to David Julius and Arden Pataptian for their outstanding contributions to human perception of pain and temperature mechanisms

Some people may mutter in their hearts: "This professor waited until someone won the award and said whether it was an afterthought

Don't worry, let's look at an academic paper first

This year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is related to Piezo protein

Exploring the mystery of the human body is the mission of life sciences

As a scientist engaged in structural biology research, Yang Maojun's team continues to track the proteins in the living body, trying their best to obtain the proteins and analyze them

There are a lot of proteins in the human body, which ones are worth analyzing?

Or, to ask more bluntly: How can we analyze the structure of a Nobel Prize-winning protein?

"The Nobel Prize has always been for the most essential things of life

Based on the judgment of the Nobel Prize tracking the essence of life, many teams have begun to focus on the newly discovered mechanisms (TRP, Piezo) of these two Nobel Prize levels

Yang Maojun recalled that the first thing his team did was TRP ion channel, but it was later surpassed by other teams

"In 2012, Gai Jingpeng from our laboratory (just joined the Shanghai University of Science and Technology to establish an independent laboratory) cloned more than 20 TRP ion channels to express, purify, and grow crystals respectively (Note: Crystal diffraction analysis of protein structure It is necessary to obtain enough protein crystals first), but none of them have grown crystals

"We stopped all these topics the day after their article came out, and turned to focus on Piezo

"Piezo is difficult to do, because it can feel the pressure signal, so the shake flask culture will not work, it will make the cells feel the strength and can't survive

Only a small amount of Piezo protein was harvested from the cells cultured on thousands of petri dishes

This is one of the reasons why the structure of this protein is still unable to be deciphered long after it was discovered

During the interview, Yang Maojun mentioned his students many times.

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