Cover of the Journal of General Physiology
The article Crystal structure of the sodium-proton antiporter NhaA dimer and new mechanistic insights made the cover image (full cover PDF) of the December issue of the Journal of General Physiology.
It shows the crystal structure of the sodium–proton antiporter NhaA homodimer in green and brown. Graduate student David Dotson, who is a joint first author on the paper, simulated the transporter protein in a 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoylphosphatidylcholine (POPC) lipid bilayer (white). The picture shows the transporter after about 1 µs of molecular dynamics simulation. Using a combination of X-ray crystallography and simulations, we elucidated the roles of conserved charged residues in the transport mechanism.
The cover image was created in VMD and rendered with the Tachyon Raytracer with ambient occlusion lighting. The protein representation was created with the Bendix VMD plugin.
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