Intein Cleavage Glimpsed With Physics

The February issue of Biophysical Journal features a paper by Philip Shemella and team who describe a "quantum biology" approach to analyze the moves of inteins. With the help of computing power from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the authors zoomed in at the quantum mechanical level to check out how such a protein cuts itself out of single-celled host proteins and reconnects its strands. The hope is that this finding may lead to even more fine-tuned methods to control the mechanism, thereby paving the way for the development of intein-based nanotechnology.