Structural comparison of
| a) traditional jewellery of ancient cultures |
| b) spiral staircases from different epochs |
| c) membrane proteins of humans and bacteria |
Answer c is correct
The cells of simple organisms, such as bacteria, are surrounded by a cell membrane, just like human cells. This membrane takes on a variety of tasks, including protecting the cell from stress. Teams from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Forschungszentrum Jülich, with the participation of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), have now discovered in a collaborative project that a membrane protein found in bacteria has a similar structure and function to proteins that are responsible for the remodelling or reconstruction of the cell membrane in humans. Until now, a connection between the two groups of proteins was not known. The research work has just been published in the renowned journal
Cell.
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