Head of our laboratory as an Instruct-ERIC Webinar invited speaker!

Ondřej Vaněk, head of the laboratory, spoke at the 25th Instruct-ERIC Webinar Series: Structure Meets Function about the structure of the human NK cell NKR-P1:LLT1 receptor:ligand complex.

Instruct-ERIC is a European research infrastructure that offers a platform for the advancement of integrative structural biology. It is an organization that brings together experts in the field of structural biology, and its Structure Meets Function webinar series aims to showcase the latest developments in this area.

The most recent webinar #25 was hosted by Instruct-CZ on March 14th, 2023, and featured expert speakers from the Czech Republic. One of the speakers was RNDr. Ondřej Vaněk, Ph.D., the head of our Laboratory of Structural Biochemistry of Immune Recognition.

In his talk for the Instruct-ERIC webinar series, Dr. Vaněk discussed the crystal structures of the NKR-P1 and NKR-P1:LLT1 complexes, which revealed important insights into the function of the human C-type lectin-like receptor NKR-P1 in the immune system. This research showed that NKR-P1 forms homodimers to enable LLT1 binding in two modes, one of which triggers effective NKR-P1 inhibitory signaling upon cellular contact in the immune synapse. Such findings provide a good model for understanding related homologous low-affinity complexes and demonstrate the importance of integrative methods in structural biology.

Participation in the Instruct-ERIC webinar series is a further testament to the quality of the science that has been done and highlights the importance of this research field.