Journal club 15/6/2009

In their paper "Chaperonin overexpression promotes genetic variation and enzyme evolution", Tokuriki and Tawfik show protein stability is a major constraint in protein evolution. Chaperonin over-expression can, at least partially, mitigate it, see Nature 459, 668-673. In the same issue of Nature, Mueller et al. present the structure of an alpha-helical toxin pore and propose a detailed mechanism for pore-formation, see pages 726-730.