The results are published in an article in the journal Nature. It’s about how fructose, a sugar species our diet contains, taken up by our cells from the blood. The researchers have now shown how the transport protein glut5 looks at the atomic level, and therefore how it lets in the fructose through the cell membrane.
– By revealing how fructose transporter functions at the atomic level, we can now begin to understand for example how it can separate fructose from all the other thousands of molecules, cells come in contact with, said David Drew, researchers the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University.
To understand the basic transport mechanism is an important step in research on diseases and health problems linked to sugar uptake, such as diabetes, obesity and some forms of cancer.
– an example for future use area can be cancer. Cancer cells require a lot of fuel in the form of sugar, and in patients with aggressive breast cancer has been seen many more sugar transporters in cancer cells than in healthy cells. As we now know how the carrier looks like it may be possible to find a molecule that blocks it, and thereby starve the cancer cells, says David Drew.
The technique used to determine fruktostransportörens structure called X-ray crystallography. Through analysis of the positions of the atoms, the researchers have managed to build three-dimensional models of the transport protein glut5.
The research team, led by David Drew from Stockholm University and Professor So Iwata at Kyoto University and Imperial College London.
article
Structure and mechanism of the mammalian fructose transport glut5 
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