Final Report Summary - ACTIN-NUCLEATORS (Structural studies of actin nucleator complexes)
Work under the project of the Marie Curie reintegration grant was concerned with the generation and regulation of the actin cytoskeleton by the human formin protein FHOD1. While we succeeded in crystallizing a full length protein of FHOD1 that contained 1164 amino acids, these crystals did not sufficiently diffract at synchrotron radiation sources for the determination of a three-dimensional protein structure until today. The 140 kDa protein was expression from baculo virus infected insect cells and purified by hexa-histidine affinity chromatography. Additional work has been performed on the phosphoglucose isomerase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv, the yeast protein Osh6 bound to phosphatidyl serine, and the human protein kinase Cdk12 that led to three publications in international peer reviewed journals.