In new findings scientists have discovered how clusters of a protein are linked to cancer damage cell membranes. The findings on these protein clusters or aggregates could help guide design of new anti-cancer drugs. 'The aggregate is a large substructure that imposes some kind of curvature on the membrane - that is really the major observation' said lead researcher Alemayehu Gorfe from the University of Texas Health Science Centre at Houston US. The researchers created coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of the Ras protein. More than one-third of all human cancers are associated with somatic or post-conception mutations in Ras proteins.
