James Wilhelm and Chalongrat Noree in the lab.DANE SAMILO
Cells have three filament types that together make up the cytoskeleton—actin, intermediate filaments, and microtubules. These filaments consist of repeating protein units and orchestrate vital functions, including cellular motility, cell division, macromolecule transport, and maintenance of the structural integrity of cells and tissues. Now James Wilhelm’s group at the University of California, San Diego, has discovered four new types of protein filaments, and believes that there could be more.
In 2003, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco used a library that contained three-quarters of the yeast proteome tagged with green fluorescent protein (GFP) to visualize the localization of proteins in living cells. A few years later, Wilhelm realized that they hadn’t detected P bodies—cytoplasmic foci made up of mRNA degradation enzymes—in the screen. ...
