Pore-forming proteins are used by various organisms to attack and damage the membranes of other cells, whether it be immune cells destroying diseased cells or bacteria gaining entry to a host. Several types of pore-forming proteins have been identified, but exactly how individual protein molecules assemble to form a pore has remained largely unknown due to the difficulty of tracking such tiny structures. Now, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Australia Node in Single Molecular Science at the University of New South Wales have developed a single-molecule microscopy technique to monitor these specific proteins, revealing new details about the pore formation pathway of perfringolysin O.
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