News Finding: The X-ray crystallography study marked the first time that the imaging technique had been used to analyze Env, while both methods resolved the trimer structure to a finer level of detail than has been reported before, the authors of the two research papers said.
Paper Finding: Both structures are, however, very different from a 6 Å structure recently reported for a detergent-solubilized, full-length but uncleaved trimer (49) .
News Context: Ward, along with Ian A. Wilson, Bridget Carragher and other colleagues from TSRI, as well as John Moore, Rogier W. Sanders and other experts from Weill Cornell, successfully managed to produce a version of the protein that can survive atomic-level imaging work while including all of the trimer structure that normally sits outside of the viral membrane. The X-ray crystallography study marked the first time that the imaging technique had been used to analyze Env, while both methods resolved the trimer structure to a finer level of detail than has been reported before, the authors of the two research papers said. "The new data are consistent with the findings on Env subunits over the last 15 years, but also have enabled us to explain many prior observations about HIV in structural terms for the first time," explained Dr. Jean-Philippe Julien, a senior research associate in the Wilson's laboratory and first author of the X-ray crystallography study.
Paper Context: The 5.8 Å resolution cryo-EM structure presented here is similar to the x-ray structure of the same SOSIP.664 gp140 trimers in complex with bnAb PGT122 ( fig. Both structures are, however, very different from a 6 Å structure recently reported for a detergent-solubilized, full-length but uncleaved trimer (49) . Differences in the design of the Env trimers might contribute to some of these structural inconsistencies.