DALLAS: The detailed picture of translocator protein suggests that it may help to minimize the damage from reactive oxygen species.
Translocator protein (TSPO) is ubiquitous. It transports cholesterol and other molecules across the membranes of mitochondria and has also been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, various cancers and cardiovascular disease. But scientists are still in the dark about how TSPO works, and its precise role in disease.
Now, two research groups have independently solved the structures of similar TSPOs from bacteria, offering clues about how TSPO functions that could spur the development of targeted drugs and better brain-imaging agents…