Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 28 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41594-026-01889-2The authors use selective ribosome profiling, cryo-ET and site-specific photocrosslinking to show how the ER membrane protein complex (EMC) cooperates with ribosome-bound translocons to facilitate multipass membrane protein biogenesis in human cells.

Nobel laureate persisted despite widespread derision and revolutionized structural biology by protecting fragile crystals.

Bulk transcriptome and proteome correlate only modestly, but this has not been investigated in the same cell or across cell-state changes. Here we introduce a scalable technology that quantifies thous...

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 23 July 2026; doi:10.1038/s41594-026-01849-wLiu, Cai and colleagues show that the human TOM–TIM22 supercomplex acts a translocation unit that directly couples mitochondrial carrier import across the outer and inner membranes, in contrast to the independent function of the complexes in yeast.

Nature Communications - N-terminal acetylation is one of the most common protein modifications. Here, the authors show how NAC recruits the essential enzyme NatB to translating ribosomes, revealing...

The Sec translocon and the YidC/Oxa1-type insertases universally mediate biogenesis of α-helical membrane proteins, but the molecular basis of their cooperation has remained disputed. Recent discovery...

Multipass membrane proteins are mostly comprised of transmembrane domain (TMD) pairs, two TMDs linked by a short non-cytosolic loop. Smalinskaitė et al. show that TMD pairs are inserted as a unit by the Oxa1-family insertases EMC and GEL, not sequentially through the Sec61 protein translocation channel as was previously thought.

Early enthusiasm for the “cellular revolution” in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) was largely driven by the promise of resolving protein structures…

Atomistic structural ensembles of protein folding intermediates on the ribosome are resolved by comprehensive 19F nuclear magnetic resonance analyses integrated with molecular dynamics simulations, pr...

Signal peptides are highly variable, yet the signal peptidase complex processes them with remarkable specificity. Here, authors combine cryo-EM, molecular dynamics simulations and modeling to reveal a...

Douglas et al. study the E3 ligase HOIL-1, mutated in patients with a type of myopathy. Mutant HOIL-1 influences the sensitivity to disulfidptosis initiated by ZAKα–ATF4 in glucose starvation and inte...

Lennartz et al. introduce a correlative light and electron microscopy workflow, Lipid-CLEM, combining near-native lipid probes and on-section labelling via click chemistry. Lipid-CLEM quantitatively a...

How ribosome-bound NAC distinguishes mitochondrial precursors from ER clients has remained unclear. Here, authors reveal a molecular switch in NAC that limits SRP access to nascent mitochondrial precu...

Santos et al. reveal NAC’s co-translational interactome, showing compartment-specific nascent chain interactions in human cells. NAC engages emerging chains at the ribosomal tunnel exit via a ribosome...

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Published online: 27 February 2026; doi:10.1038/s41594-026-01756-0Kroczek et al show that degradation of DNAJC15 by OMA1 and AFG3L2 under stress limits mitochondrial protein import and OXPHOS biogenesis. Non-imported proteins lead to the induction of the unfolded protein responses from the endoplasmic reticulum.

Large oligomeric proteins constitute a major fraction of proteomes, but are difficult to refold in vitro, raising the question of how cells direct their biogenesis. Roeselová and Shivakumaraswamy et a...

Cells depend on early protein modifications for proper function. Here, the authors show that when Src-family signaling kinases lack their typical myristoylation, an alternative acetylated start is det...

Nature - NAC controls nascent chain fate through tunnel sensing and chaperone action

NAC enables cotranslational N-terminal processing of histones H2A and H4 by recruiting MetAP1 and NatD at the ribosomal tunnel.

The structural mechanism of a natively isolated GRP94 folding intermediate tethered to a CCDC134-bound translocon is described, revealing how the nascent chain remodels the translocon to control N-glycosylation by OST.

Selective ribosome profiling reveals that nearly 20% of mitochondrial proteins in human cells are imported during translation on cytosolic ribosomes. Cotranslational import requires an N-terminal pres...

The nascent polypeptide-associated complex (NAC) is a conserved ribosome-bound factor with essential yet incompletely understood roles in protein biogenesis. Here, we show that NAC is a multifaceted r...

The correct synthesis of new proteins is essential for maintaining a functional proteome and cell viability. This process is tightly regulated, with ribosomes and associated protein biogenesis factors...