ABCG2, which is a crucial protein in development of multidrug resistance in cancer cells, is a transporter machine, acting like a vacuum cleaner in the membrane that removes a wide range of drugs from the cell. Given its heavily fatty environment, it's not surprising that its function is highly influenced by lipids and cholesterol. To shed light on the underlying mechanism, cryo-EM and functional assays in the Locher lab at ETH Zürich, were combined with computational microscopy using NAMD and VMD at the Center, to discover, for the first time, that lipids can enter the protein's binding pocket and directly interact with the bound drugs. More interestingly, cholesterol is found to guard the binding pocket's gates from other lipids, thus accelerating the transport function of the protein. Read more about the study in a recent PNAS paper.