Bill Murray’s ominous premonition aside, animal metaphors have been invading my work. Here, a quality control phosphatase (beagle) surveys Protein Kinase C (armadillo). Alexandra Newton’s lab showed that if Protein Kinase C relaxes its compact conformation, its phosphate (tennis ball) will be plucked off and the kinase will be rapidly degraded. Important because more beagles and fewer armadillos correlates with decreased survival in pancreatic cancer.
And next, when the client says that you can make the cover whatever you want, but by the way, the first author really really likes cats, this is what happens. Josh Figueroa’s lab showed that ligand exchange in a cobalt complex proceeds via an associative mechanism. In other words, if the leaving ligand left before the new ligand joined (or if the orange cat poised to jump leaves before the black cat gets there to take its place), the whole thing becomes too unstable.
