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A new way of fixing inactive proteins has been discovered in algae that uses chloroplast extracts and light to release an interrupting sequence from a protein. Many proteins contain extra sequences, called insertions, that can disrupt their function. This research demonstrates that the algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has the necessary toolkit to repair proteins by removing these insertions. This repair system may have applications in agriculture and biotechnology because it could potentially be harnessed to enable proteins to become active only in the light.
Image credit: Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility, Dartmouth College (via Wikimedia Commons)
