This paper reports the fabrication of a biodegradable microfluidic device based on zein, a prolamin protein derived from corn. Micro-chambers and micro-channels features have been replicated on zein films using a stereo lithography master. Enclosed zein microfluidic devices are made by bonding the zein films with microfluidic features to glass substrates using a simple vapor-deposition method. ...

Heat is of fundamental importance in many cellular processes such as cell metabolism, cell division and gene expression. (1-3) Accurate and noninvasive monitoring of temperature changes in individual cells could thus help clarify intricate cellular processes and develop new applications in biology and medicine. Here we report the use of green fluorescent proteins (GFP) as thermal nanoprobes sui...

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is increasingly being used in plant biology from the cellular level to whole plant level. At the cellular level, GFP is being used as an in vivo reporter to assess frequency of transient and stable transformation. GFP has also proven to be an invaluable tool in monitoring trafficking and subcellular localization of protein. At the organ level and up, many excitin...

The fluorescence of bacterial cells expressing a variant (GFPm) of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) was reduced to background levels by global replacement of the leucine residues of GFPm by 5,5,5-trifluoroleucine. Eleven rounds of random mutagenesis and screening via fluorescence-activated cell sorting yielded a GFP mutant containing 20 amino acid substitutions. The mutant protein in fluorin...

Proton pathways in green fluorescent protein (GFP) are more extended than previously reported. In the x-ray data of wild-type GFP, a two-step exit pathway exists from the active site to the protein surface, controlled by a threonine switch. A proton entry pathway begins at a glutamate-lysine cluster around Glu-5, and extends all the way to the buried Glu-222 near the active site. This structura...

erated by introducing foreign genes into the nuclear genome. Here we focus on plastid transformation as an alternative. Plastids have their own rudimentary genome, the plastome, which encodes around 120 genes [1]. Plastids in green tissues are “chloroplasts”, whose primary function is photosynthesis. In contrast to the nuclear genome with typically two copies of each gene per cell, the plastome...