Scientists Demystifying Proteins

Imagine trying to reverse engineer a car when all you have is a finished product or a box full of parts – no instructions.

That’s what scientists have been trying to do with proteins, the mysterious and powerful molecules in every living organism that are responsible for thousands of tasks every day, such as catalyzing metabolic reactions, responding to stimuli and transporting molecules from one location to another.

The body uses proteins to build and repair tissues, make reactions happen, signal and control processes, and as hormones and antibodies.

“They are the little machines inside cells,” UC Merced bioengineering Professor Victor Muñoz said. “They pretty much do everything.”

Thanks to Muñoz and his research colleagues, those instructions are becoming clearer because, for the first time, researchers can watch the intricacies of the process by which proteins self-assemble into their functioning states.

In their new paper, published last week in Nature Communications, Muñoz and his colleagues detail how they are beginning to illuminate a mysterious natural process that, if controllable, could lead to breakthrough treatments for diseases, among many other applications.

Each protein is a unique string of amino acid chains encoded with DNA that dictates its mission. But each protein has to achieve its proper 3-D shape to fulfill its destiny.

Scientists don’t know how proteins fold, or why they sometimes misfold. Folding is hard to catch because it happens rarely and instantaneously.

“Waiting for proteins to fold is like watching soccer — nothing seems to happen for a long time, then, suddenly, you blink and miss the goal being scored,” Muñoz said. “We know that when a protein folds it must follow a complex series of steps, like assembling a car in a production line. The problem is that when the protein actually folds, all the steps happen almost at the same time, and their order changes every time.”

The protein work is related to one of three focus areas of UC Merced’s new CREST Center for Cellular and Biomolecular Machines, co-led by Muñoz.

Funded by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology program, the center brings together more than a dozen faculty members from across campus, including bioengineering, physics, chemistry and chemical biology, materials science, and engineering.

It also dovetails with the work Muñoz is doing through the prestigious $1 million Keck Award he won earlier this year.

Fresno Partnership to Improve Student Success

Building on an existing seven-year partnership with UC Merced, the Fresno Unified School District is spearheading an innovative collaboration to increase the number of its students who complete their bachelor’s degrees.

Leaders from Fresno Unified, UC Merced, Fresno State and State Center Community College District signed a memorandum of understanding last week to work toward the goal of increasing college and career readiness for all students. The Fresno Unified Higher Education Partnership will give the four institutions the capability to share data and use it to increase students’ successful transition from high school to college, and from community college to a four-year university.

A $500,000 grant from the nonprofit College Futures Foundation made the alliance a reality. The partnering institutions have also committed funds toward the project.

In 2009, UC Merced opened an office within Fresno Unified to create a data monitoring system to provide students resources and support as early as possible. Placing staff members in Fresno Unified’s Department of Equity and Access has helped the two educational systems develop and monitor student data.

“UC Merced is joining this new partnership because we’ve seen firsthand how our existing seven-year partnership with Fresno Unified has made a difference,” Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Charles Nies said, citing a 16 percent increase in first-year admit rates of Fresno Unified students to UC Merced from 2014 to 2016.

Once they are at UC Merced, those students graduate at rates nearly 20 percent higher than the national average, Nies said.

Under the newly formed partnership, staff members from Fresno State and State Center Community College District will work beside UC Merced and district staff members to identify the most challenging barriers that keep students from transitioning successfully to college.

“Each of our institutions has a role to play in concert with one another to support the educational goals of this region,” Nies said. “United by this MOU, we can and we will do more.”

This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Scientists Demystifying Proteins."