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The editors of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology have assembled a special Essay Collection, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank, to reflect on the history and future of structural biology. These personal accounts collectively tell the history of structural biology and provide perspectives on the direction of the field and challenges that it faces.
Every field of research has influential papers that have shaped and guided future work. Reinhard Jahn gives his picks for membrane fusion and a little bit of history about how the field has developed.
Andrew Fire and Craig Mello have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for their discovery of RNA interference. Mary K. Montgomery, then a postdoc in the Fire laboratory, participated in some of the key experiments.
Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider and Jack Szostak were recently recognized with the Lasker award for their work on telomerase and the role of this enzyme in cellular proliferation. Vicki Lundblad reflects on the excitement as these experiments were unfolding.
This year's Nobel laureate in chemistry is Roger Kornberg. Patrick Cramer gives a personal account of how the Kornberg laboratory determined the structure of the RNA polymerase II core enzyme.
