The aim of this blog is to explain the experiments, results and importance of some groundbreaking structural research carried out by Motoyuki Hattori and Eric Gouaux on the P2X4 receptor in a recently published Nature paper.
We believe that presenting the stages of a scientific paper is in many ways like telling a story. We have designed this blog to take you through each stage of Hattori and Gouaux's paper as if reading through the chapters of a book.
In a nutshell, Hattori and Gouaux have produced the first ever structure of the open and activated ATP bound P2X4 receptor, in doing so they have revealed a never-before-seen ATP binding site and they have facilliated a whole new era of research by proposing a long awaited mechanism for P2X4 receptor activation.
The P2X4 receptor may mean very little to you at present. However this is a receptor whose effects can be felt in nearly every major system in your body. That's your nervous system, your cardiovascular system and your immune system. This receptor helps us to taste, to feel and to move. This receptor even causes us to feel pain. You can imagine how advantageous it would be to expand our knowledge of this receptor family yet these receptors remained an elusive bunch up until very recently.
Start to familiarise yourself with the main character, the P2X4 receptor, with this animation of its structure below:
We believe that presenting the stages of a scientific paper is in many ways like telling a story. We have designed this blog to take you through each stage of Hattori and Gouaux's paper as if reading through the chapters of a book.
In a nutshell, Hattori and Gouaux have produced the first ever structure of the open and activated ATP bound P2X4 receptor, in doing so they have revealed a never-before-seen ATP binding site and they have facilliated a whole new era of research by proposing a long awaited mechanism for P2X4 receptor activation.
The P2X4 receptor may mean very little to you at present. However this is a receptor whose effects can be felt in nearly every major system in your body. That's your nervous system, your cardiovascular system and your immune system. This receptor helps us to taste, to feel and to move. This receptor even causes us to feel pain. You can imagine how advantageous it would be to expand our knowledge of this receptor family yet these receptors remained an elusive bunch up until very recently.
Start to familiarise yourself with the main character, the P2X4 receptor, with this animation of its structure below:
So here it is: the story of the P2X4 receptor...
