New publication from the Reinhardt and Strauss labs

Two faculty members of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology joined forces to bridge the field of cryo-electron microscopy (Mike Strauss) and extracellular matrix cell biology (Dieter Reinhardt). This interdisciplinary team also spanned faculties across McGill, as Michael Wozny (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences) and Valentin Nelea (Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences) spearheaded the experimental approaches together with other team members and a visiting scholar. The availability of the Facility for Electron Microscopy Research was instrumental in this research.

The team solved the long-sought-for structure of an extracellular matrix protein, the microfibril-associated glycoprotein 4. The high-resolution structure of this protein revealed an unusual octameric architecture that has important functional implications for how it interacts with other matrix proteins and cells. This protein and the results gathered by the group have implications for several diseases, including Marfan syndrome, cardiovascular disorders, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver fibrosis, and cirrhosis. The study has now been published in Nature Communications.