title: Symmetry breaking in homo-oligomers: the curious case of mega-hemocyanin.
abstract: Mega-hemocyanin is a 13.5 MDa oxygen transporter found in snails. It is built from three stacked rings involving ten subunits each. The cryo-EM structure of the complex presented by Gatsogiannis and colleagues in this issue of Structure revealed an unexpected breaking of 5-fold symmetry in the central ring and a nonequivalent packing of the subunits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Hector
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Garcia Seisdedos
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.
authors.forename: Avital
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Steinberg
authors.affiliation: Department of Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel. Electronic address: emmanuel.levy@weizmann.ac.il.
authors.forename: Emmanuel D
authors.initials: ED
authors.lastname: Levy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D006433:Hemocyanins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D055503:Protein Multimerization; D012908:Snails
chemical_list: D006433:Hemocyanins