News archive for Structural neurobiology

The Shank family of proteins functions as a molecular scaffold in the neuronal post-synaptic density, enabling numerous protein-protein interactions. Shanks are large multi-domain molecules, and one of the conserved domains is an SH3 domain. Using high-resolution X-ray crystallography, we show that the SH3 domain in the Shank family has lost its canonical ligand-binding site.