Tacc Podcasts

It takes two to tango, as the saying goes. This is especially true for scientists studying what’s inside of a cell. Protein molecules inside a cell interact with other proteins, and in a sense the proteins dance with a partner to respond to signals and regulate each other's activities. Crucial to giving cells energy for life is the migration of a compound called adenosine triphosphate or ATP, out of the cell's powerhouse, the mitochondria. And critical for this flow out to the power-hungry parts of the cell is the interaction between a protein enzyme called hexokinase-II and proteins in the voltage-dependent anion channel, VDAC, found on the outer membrane of the mitochondria. Supercomputer simulations have revealed for the first time how VDAC binds to HKII. The work was supported by allocations awarded by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, funded by the National Science Foundation on the Stampede2 system of TACC. This basic research in how proteins interact out of the cell's power