Skip to content

Maria Pellegrini Posts

An engineered construct of cFLIP provides insight into DED1 structure and interactions

Posted in publication

Just published in Structure. To enable NMR-based drug discovery on cFLIP, an important pro-survival factor in the extrinsic apoptosis pathway, we engineered a soluble DED1 domain, “borrowing” a sequence from the soluble DED of FADD.
We solved the solution structure of the engineered DED1 domain of cFLIP by NMR and CS-ROSETTA and used NMR-based methods to map the binding interface with DISC partners.
Stay tuned for our ongoing studies on inhibitors discovery through NMR-based fragment screening: we are interested in testing the effect of our inhibitors on DISC assembly and caspase-8 activation.

The structure of a highly conserved picocyanobacterial protein reveals a Tudor domain with an RNA binding function.

Posted in publication

Bauer KM, Dicovitsky R, Pellegrini M, Zhaxybayeva O, Ragusa MJ
J Biol Chem. 2019 Aug 7. pii: jbc.RA119.007938. doi: 10.1074/jbc.RA119.007938. [Epub ahead of print]
Abstract
Cyanobacteria of the Prochlorococcus and marine Synechococcus genera are the most abundant photosynthetic microbes in the ocean.  Intriguingly, the genomes of these bacteria strongly diverge even within each genus, both in gene content and at the amino acid level of the encoded proteins.