Expanding the optogenetics toolkit

Expanding the Biology Toolkit

Whether you call it biochemistry, molecular pharmacology, or chemical biology, one thing we can agree on is that chemists have long sought to advance the biological sciences. Through development of reagents, instruments, algorithms, and technologies, chemistry brings to biology the ability to drill down to molecules, bonds and atoms—the scale of matter at which all living things converge on com...

Expanding the femtosecond crystallography toolkit.

The “21 century of biology” is built on advances in protein structure determination developed over the last five decades. Exponential growth in the number of determined protein structures has largely been driven by new technologies in protein X-ray crystallography, including synchrotron X-ray sources, X-ray detectors, computational tools, and methods of handling protein crystals. In consequence...

MHC multimers: expanding the clinical toolkit.

T cell recognition of specific antigen is initiated by the interaction between TCR molecules and peptide–MHC complexes (pMHC) expressed on the surface of antigenpresenting cells. Soluble pMHC molecules can substitute as ligands in this interaction, binding specifically to T cells expressing the appropriate TCR. Because the monomeric interaction of TCR–pMHC is of low avidity [1–6], multimerizati...

Expanding the genetic toolkit of Tribolium castaneum

Expanding the molecular toolkit for the homoacetogen Clostridium ljungdahlii

Increasing interest in homoacetogenic bacteria for the production of biochemicals and biofuels requisites the development of new genetic tools for these atypical production organisms. An attractive host for the conversion of synthesis gas or electricity into multi-carbon compounds is Clostridium ljungdahlii. So far only limited achievements in modifying this organism towards the production of i...