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5/23/2025

A CHROMOSOME'S GLUE
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue March 2025
www.proteinspotlight.org

We all begin with one cell, which divides into two - and so on. However, if two daughter cells are to survive, a mother cell cannot just split in two, pour half of its contents into one cell and tilt the rest in the second. That would be like producing two cars of the same make where one is built with no engine and the other with no wheels. Every part of a cell has a specific and an essential role, which is why each part has to be inherited by progeny. This occurs thanks to a mechanism known as mitosis during which a dividing cell's chromosomes alternate between two opposing states: individualized and clustered.

Chromosomes Chromatids
by Jenny Gray

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4/23/2025

A DARK KINASE
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue March 2025
www.proteinspotlight.org

There are no other cells in humans that have the capacity to wriggle and move forward the way spermatozoa do. Many organisms can move like spermatozoa, such as bacteria or protists for example, but these are unicellular from the start and really only have themselves to depend upon. Spermatozoa cannot survive on their own, but they can move on their own. In fact, locomotion is really all they have evolved for. So evolution has trimmed the architecture of spermatozoa down to the very essential: a head attached to a powerful tail – a model of biological design and technology.

The Rye Marshes
by Paul Nash

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3/27/2025

RELAY
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue March 2025
www.proteinspotlight.org

Life is a powerful force. It never ceases to find ways of continuing, plucking from Nature what it needs to create offspring. Rich soil broken down by earthworms feeds the emerging buds of flowers. Grains shed by fruit provide hatchlings with food, and the planet's oceans stock up with plankton to sustain their schools of fish and pods of whales. This team spirit also exists on the molecular scale. When mothers lactate, for example, their bodies draw calcium from their own bones to build the bones of their newborn. In the meantime, maternal factors are activated to replace the calcium that has been removed from the mother's bones. In this way, the mother's bones are not weakened while the baby's bones are strengthened - and life carries on.

Nursing Mother
by Paula Modersohn-Becker

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3/13/2025

DIMENSIONS
EPFL, numéro - printemps 2024

avec le dessinateur Baptiste Milesi (monde binaire), nous découvrons le Laboratory for fundamental BioPhotonics dirigé par la Prof. Sylvie Roke

dessins: monde binaire

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2/27/2025

THE DORMANT RIBOSOME
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue February 2025
www.proteinspotlight.org

Snowdrops are here. Winter is almost over. Spring is about to burst. How do life cycles begin ? In fact, do they ever stop? No, life cycles never truly stop but they can be delayed for certain periods of time. Depending on the surrounding conditions, quiescence can last for days, weeks, months, years - or even thousands of years. Consider certain bacteria, plant seeds, or even animals that hibernate. Dormancy is not really surprising given that any biological activity consumes energy. Take human egg cells. Stalled for years in ovaries, they patiently await the meagre hope of maturing and the even sparser chance of being fertilized. What causes them to stall? Hosts of protein factors which impede, but also protect, crucial enzymes - such as ribosomes for instance.

Snowdrops
by Anna Harley

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1/29/2025

YELLOW
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue January 2025
www.proteinspotlight.org

Humans have always diverted things for their own benefit. Glucose oxidase, or GOx, is one. This enzyme feeds on glucose and oxygen producing hydrogen peroxide in its wake. A limitless source of inspiration. GOx is currently used to preserve all sorts of consumable items while monitoring their sweetness and warding off microbes. It is also used in medicine to regulate glucose levels in fluids as it is used in the textile industry for bleaching and even in engineering to improve the viscosity of cements. A sort of success story for an enzyme that was discovered exactly 100 years ago.

A Field of Yellow Flowers
by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

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12/19/2024

UNCONVENTIONAL
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue December 2024
www.proteinspotlight.org

One human body harbours about 380 trillion viruses and 39 trillion bacteria - both on our skin and underneath it. Your body is teeming with organisms that use you as convenient terrain to reproduce, multiply and spread. Over the years, we have formed an understanding with many of them, and we live on a give and take basis. As an illustration, the sum of viruses we carry is thought to have an overall role in keeping our immune system alert. Scientists have discovered a novel immune strategy used by our brain cells to prevent the herpes virus from infecting them. The mechanism involves a protein known as TMEFF1.

woodcut be Kamisaka Sekka (1866-1942)

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12/16/2024

DIMENSIONS
EPFL, numéro - hiver 2024

avec le dessinateur Pierre Wazem, nous découvrons le Resilient Steel Structures Laboratory dirigé par le Prof. Dimitrios Lignos

dessins: Pierre Wazem

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11/13/2024

ON DOSING AND COMPENSATING
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue November 2024
www.proteinspotlight.org

Drosophila flies are born with four pairs of chromosomes in each of their cells. It is the genetic heritage they receive from their genitors. One pair represents the sex chromosomes - of which there are two, X and Y. Just like all mammals, female flies carry an extra X chromosome. However, in Drosophila, researchers have discovered a protein whose role is to prevent any kind of genetic imbalance with regards, precisely, to X-linked genes. Its name? MSL2.

"Tight Rope Walker (ca. 1923)"
by Paul Klee (1879-1940)

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10/31/2024

SHIFT
SIB Protein Spotlight - issue October 2024
www.proteinspotlight.org

α-actinin-3 is a protein and an integral part of muscle. Some humans, although healthy, have no α-actinin-3 at all. It turns out that they have greater endurance, while those who do have the protein are usually good sprinters.

"The Runners (ca. 1930)"
linocut by Cyril Power (1872-1951)

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