Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology

3 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Cancer Research

How to Study Basement Membrane Stiffness as a Biophysical Trigger in Prostate Cancer and Other Age-related Pathologies or Metabolic Diseases

Mercedes Rodriguez-Teja¹, Claudia Breit², Mitchell Clarke³, Kamil Talar³, Kai Wang³, Mohammad A. Mohammad³, Sage Pickwell³, Guillermina Etchandy¹, Graeme J. Stasiuk³, Justin Sturge³

¹Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de la República (UDELAR), ²Department of Mechanistic Cell Biology, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, ³School of Biological, Biomedical & Environmental Sciences, University of Hull

Here we explain a protocol for modelling the biophysical microenvironment where crosslinking and increased stiffness of the basement membrane (BM) induced by advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) has pathological relevance.

Biochemistry

High-resolution Single Particle Analysis from Electron Cryo-microscopy Images Using SPHIRE

Toshio Moriya¹, Michael Saur¹, Markus Stabrin¹, Felipe Merino¹, Horatiu Voicu², Zhong Huang², Pawel A. Penczek², Stefan Raunser¹, Christos Gatsogiannis¹

¹Department of Structural Biochemistry, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, ²Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Texas Medical School at Houston

This paper presents a protocol for processing cryo-EM images using the software suite SPHIRE. The present protocol can be applied for nearly all single particle EM projects that target near-atomic resolution.

Genetics

Dual CRISPR-Interference Strategy for Targeting Synthetic Lethal Interactions Between Non-Coding RNAs in Cancer Cells

Jeffrey L. Schloßhauer^*1,2, Sama Shamloo^*1,2, Katja Schamrin^1,2, Jochen Imig^1,2

¹Chemical Genomics Centre of the Max Planck Society, ²Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology

This study presents a dual CRISPRi system targeting long non-coding RNAs in melanoma cells. It enables combinatorial gene knockdown and synthetic lethal screening, identifying cancer-specific lncRNA interactions for potential therapeutic strategies.