Aleksandar Chernev

Abstract Ferlins, ancient membrane proteins with a unique architecture, are central to multiple essential, Ca2+-dependent vesicle fusion processes. Despite numerous functional studies and their link to burdening human diseases, a mechanistic understanding of how these multi-C2 domain proteins interact with lipid membranes to promote their remodeling and fusion is currently lacking.

Abstract CRISPR-Cas is a sophisticated defence system used by bacteria and archaea to fend off invaders. CRISPR-Cas systems vary in their Cas protein composition and have therefore been divided into different classes and types. Type I systems of bacteria have been shown to contain the small Cas11 protein as part of the interference complex. Here we show for the first time that an archaeal CRISPR-Cas type I system also contains a Cas11 protein.

Abstract UV (ultra-violet) crosslinking with mass spectrometry (XL-MS) has been established for identifying RNA- and DNA-binding proteins along with their domains and amino acids involved. Here, we explore chemical XL-MS for RNA-protein, DNA-protein, and nucleotide-protein complexes in vitro and in vivo. We introduce a specialized nucleotide-protein-crosslink search engine, NuXL, for robust and fast identification of such crosslinks at amino acid resolution.