Designer proteins activate fluorescent molecules

INTERACTION OF PROTEINS WITH SMALL MOLECULES

Designer proteins in biotechnology

Introduction The structural and functional complexity of proteins as heteropolymeric polypeptide chains is based on diverse interactions between a variety of their hydrophobic, polar and ionizable side chains. These interactions occur in unliganded proteins as well as on association with ligands. This complexity makes it difficult to predict accurately the structure and function of a protein fr...

Optical probing of single fluorescent molecules and proteins.

Single-molecule detection and analysis of organic fluorescent molecules and proteins are presented, with emphasis on the underlying principles, methodology and the application of single-molecule analysis at room temperature. This Minireview is mainly focused on the application of confocal and near-field optical microscopy to investigate the photodynamics of individual molecules embedded in ultr...

Looking at the photodynamics of individual fluorescent molecules and proteins *

The photodynamics of individual molecules and fluorescent proteins has been investigated in real time. In the case of organic molecules, both the triplet state lifetime and intersystem crossing yield appear to vary in time and space. In the case of autofluorescent proteins, light-driven “on-off” fluorescence emission has been observed, with a behavior that is consistent with the existence of a ...

Designer small molecules to target calcium signalling.

Synthetic compounds open up new avenues to interrogate and manipulate intracellular Ca2+ signalling pathways. They may ultimately lead to drug-like analogues to intervene in disease. Recent advances in chemical biology tools available to probe Ca2+ signalling are described, with a particular focus on those synthetic analogues from our group that have enhanced biological understanding or represe...