Cover of The EMBO Journal
The article Structure and elevator mechanism of the mammalian sodium/proton exchanger NHE9 made the cover image of the December issue of The EMBO Journal.
It shows the cryo-electron microscopy structure of the sodium–proton antiporter NHE9 homodimer during molecular dynamics simulations in a lipid bilayer. This membrane protein transports ions and protons by up/down movements of the blue transport domains (called an elevator transition) while the orange dimerization domain anchors the protein in the membrane. The two domains are connected by a linker helix (gray).
Graduate students Chenou Zhang and Ricky Sexton simulated the transporter protein with all atom and coarse grained MD simulations to eludicate sodium binding and interaction of the protein with the membrane (white in the image).
Ricky Sexton created the cover image in VMD and rendered with the Tachyon Raytracer with ambient occlusion lighting. The protein “sausage” representation was made with the Bendix VMD plugin.
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