Two biophysicists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have used supercomputers to show how cell membranes control the shape, and consequently the function, of a major cancer-causing protein. The protein, a small enzyme called K-Ras, is attached to cell membranes where it senses signals that originate outside the cell. During cancer, dysfunctional K-Ras then activates proteins inside the cell that can cause tumor growth and metastasis. K-Ras functions as a troublesome molecular switch, which is perpetually “on” in many cancers, particularly pancreatic cancer. The study not only offers a novel method to study K-Ras, which is only 1\/100,000th of an inch across, but also shows how the protein’s geometry could explain its role in cancer progression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two biophysicists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have used supercomputers to show how cell membranes control the shape, and consequently the function, of a major cancer-causing protein. The protein, a small enzyme called K-Ras,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-296788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":296789,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296788\/revisions\/296789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}