Chitosan has been widely used in food industry as a weight-loss aid and a cholesterol-lowering agent. Previous studies have shown that chitosan affects metabolic responses and contributes to anti-diabetic, hypocholesteremic, and blood glucose-lowering effects; however, the in vivo targeting sites and mechanisms of chitosan remain to be clarified. In this study, we constructed transgenic mice, w...

We recently developed novel bioluminescent binding assays for several protein/peptide hormones to study their interactions with receptors using the so far brightest NanoLuc reporter. To validate the novel bioluminescent binding assay using a variety of protein/peptide hormones, in the present work we applied it to the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family using the prototype member FGF2 as an e...

The liver stages of Plasmodium parasites are important targets for the development of anti-malarial vaccine candidates and chemoprophylaxis approaches that aim to prevent clinical infection. Analyzing the impact of interventions on liver stages in the murine malaria model system Plasmodium yoelii has been cumbersome and requires terminal procedures. In vivo imaging of bioluminescent parasites h...

Animal studies with Streptococcus pneumoniae have provided valuable models for drug development. In order to monitor long-term pneumococcal infections noninvasively in living mice, a novel gram-positive lux transposon cassette, Tn4001 luxABCDE Km(r), that allows random integration of lux genes onto the bacterial chromosome was constructed. The cassette was designed so that the luxABCDE and kana...

Chemokine CXCL12 and its two known receptors, CXCR4 and CXCR7, may play a role in diseases including tumor growth and metastasis, atherosclerosis, and HIV infection. Therefore, these molecules may be promising targets for drug development. While studies of cell signaling and high-throughput screening for drug discovery increasingly are based on luminescent assays because of their high sensitivi...

From ten species of bioluminescent coelenterates we have isolated a membrane-enclosed subcellular particle that is apparently responsible for the bioluminescence in these animals. The animals investigated were species of Obelia and Clyfia (from the class Hydrozoa) and species of Renilta, Pfilosarcus, Sfylafula, Acanfhopfilum, and Parazoanfhus (from the class Anthozoa). By electron microscopy th...