Single-Molecule Conformational Analysis of Apolipoprotein E

Determination of apolipoprotein E genotypes by single-strand conformational polymorphism.

We used single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) to determine apolipoprotein E (Apo E) genotypes in 47 individuals. A 295-base-pair (bp) DNA fragment coding for amino acid residues 80-178 of the Apo E protein gave distinct patterns for the three alleles. When we used SSCP to determine the Apo E polymorphism of five individuals whose phenotyping results differed from those of genotyping,...

Single-Molecule Conformational Dynamics of a Biologically Functional Hydroxocobalamin Riboswitch

Riboswitches represent a family of highly structured regulatory elements found primarily in the leader sequences of bacterial mRNAs. They function as molecular switches capable of altering gene expression; commonly, this occurs via a conformational change in a regulatory element of a riboswitch that results from ligand binding in the aptamer domain. Numerous studies have investigated the ligand...

Single-molecule fluorescence studies of protein folding and conformational dynamics.

Single-Molecule Enzymatic Conformational Dynamics: Spilling Out the Product Molecules

Product releasing is an essential step of an enzymatic reaction, and a mechanistic understanding primarily depends on the active-site conformational changes and molecular interactions that are involved in this step of the enzymatic reaction. Here we report our work on the enzymatic product releasing dynamics and mechanism of an enzyme, horseradish peroxidase (HRP), using combined single-molecul...

Bridging conformational dynamics and function using single-molecule spectroscopy.

In a typical structure-function relation study, the primary structure of proteins or nucleic acids is changed by mutagenesis and its functional effect is measured via biochemical means. Single-molecule spectroscopy has begun to give a whole new meaning to the "structure-function relation" by measuring the real-time conformational changes of individual biological macromolecules while they are fu...