生物化学技术

The Structural Genomics of Pathogenic Protozoa (SGPP) Consortium aimed to determine crystal structures of proteins from trypanosomatid and malaria parasites in a high throughput manner. The pipeline of target selection, protein production, crystallization, and structure d ...

The completion of the human genome allows the analysis, for the first time, of biological systems in the context of entire gene families. For enzymes, this approach permits the exploration of complex substrate specificity networks that often exhibit considerable overlap within and betw ...

This chapter describes the modules and facilities of the Structural Biology and Genomics Platform (SBGP), Strasbourg, France. The platform consists of three modules (cloning, mini-expression screening; optimization-large scale protein production; characterization, cr ...

The focus over the last several years on increasing the number of three-dimensional structures of macromolecules by implementation of high throughput methodology has led to the establishment of dedicated structural genomics programs around the world. These worldwide efforts ha ...

Phase II of the Protein Structure Initiative, funded by the NIH NIGMS (National Institute of General Medical Sciences), is a 5-year effort to determine thousands of protein structures. The New York SGX Research Center for Structural Genomics (NYSGXRC) is one of the four large-scale producti ...

This chapter describes the methodology adopted in a project aimed at structural and functional characterization of proteins that potentially play an important role in mammalian macrophages. The methodology that underpins this project is applicable to both small research groups ...

Mobile gene cassettes collectively carry a highly diverse pool of novel genes, ostensibly for purposes of microbial adaptation. At the sequence level, putative functions can only be assigned to a minority of carried ORFs due to their inherent novelty. Having established these mobilized g ...

The zebrafish is a favorite model organism to study tissue morphogenesis during development at a subcellular level. This largely results from the fact that zebrafish embryos are transparent and thus accessible to various imaging techniques, such as confocal and two-photon excitati ...

The zebrafish provides an ideal model for the study of vertebrate organogenesis, including the formation of the digestive tract and its associated organs. Despite optical transparency of embryos, the internal position of the developing digestive system and its close juxtaposition ...

Microscopy has been one of the most direct and powerful tools since the beginning of biological research. Continued advances such as confocal and two-photon fluorescence microscopy and fluorescent proteins now make imaging useful at a variety of spatial scales (molecules, circuits, c ...

Oxidative stress is defined as a disturbance in the prooxidant-antioxidant balance in favor of the former (1) and has been suggested be a causative factor in aging and degenerative diseases such as heart attack, diabetes, and cancer. The ubiquinol/ubiquinone ratio should therefore be a good m ...

Ceruloplasmin is an acute-phase reactant that functions as a ferroxidase, oxidizing Fe++to Fe+++, the latter being able to combine with apotransferrin to form transferrin, the primary iron transport protein in the plasma. Ferroxidases indirectly reduce formation of hydroxyl radical ...

Metallothionein (MT) is reported as having an intensive affinity to a number of heavy metal ions such as Zn2+, Cd2+, Cu2+, and Hg2+, which suggests a relation with zinc and copper homeostasis (1). The structural uniqueness of MT is expressed by its high cysteine content without intramolecular cysti ...

Herbal medicine is gaining rapid acceptance all over the world. Our earliest knowledge of herbal medicine, also termed as &quote;naturomedicine,&quote; dates back to about 3000 bc when Chinese, Islamic-tibb, and Ayurvedic medicine in India were widely practiced. It is possible to trace ba ...

One of the most prominent characteristics of metallothionein (MT) is its high cysteine content of 30%. The sulfhydryl groups, normally involved in metal binding, render the protein particularly sensitive towards oxidation. Oxidation of sulfhydryl groups in MT may occur in vivo and in vitr ...

Despite the elegant patho-physiological mechanisms that have been identified linking lipid peroxidation to the development of atherosclerosis, the clinical evidence linking markers of oxidative stress to coronary heart disease is still controversial (1-4) in particular for ...

Living organisms possess not only fine-tuned metabolic mechanisms for endogenous chemicals but also several defensive mechanisms to detoxify xenobiotics. Most metabolic processes that eliminate invading foreign chemicals by transforming them into more hydrophilic or mo ...

In the backbone amide linker (BAL) strategy, the peptide is anchored not at the C-terminus but through a backbone amide, which leaves the C-terminal available for various modifications. This is thus a very general strategy for the introduction of C-terminal modifications. The BAL strategy was ...

This chapter provides two protocols for the solid-phase synthesis of peptide thioesters using N α -Fmoc-protected amino acids. The first protocol is based on a so-called safety-catch linker, while the second relies on a backbone amide linker.

In order to link structural features on a molecular level to the function of chemokines, site-specific modification strategies are strongly required. These can be used to incorporate fluorescent dyes and/or physical probes to allow investigations in a wide range of biological and physi ...