Opioid receptors were one of the first class of cell surface receptors to be identified using in vitro binding assays with brain tissue, but for many years efforts to purify and clone them were unsuccessful because of their sensitivity to detergents, their heterogeneity, and the lack of a simple biochemical assay for their function (Loh and Smith 1990). Several laboratories, including the autho...

The bile acids (mainly C24 but also C27) are the end products of cholesterol catabolism in animals, the main functions of which are to act as powerful detergents or emulsifying agents in the intestines to aid the digestion and absorption of fatty acids, monoacylglycerols and other fatty products and to prevent the precipitation of cholesterol in bile. Very many different bile acids and alcohols...

1. After dimethylnitrosamine (DMNA) administration to mice, the content of poly(A)-containing RNA decreases rapidly in the postmicrosomal fraction of the liver. We report here that the loss of free mRNA is not a result of increased nucleolytic activity. On the contrary, a decreased activity of microsomal endonuclease, assayed by its effect on polyribosomal mRNA, was demonstrated already 15 min ...

Experimental drugs and compounds that do not easily dissolve in water or saline are frequently combined with vehicles like solvents, detergents, or vegetable oils. Yet very little has been reported on the behavioral effects of vehicles. In this study, we assessed the effects of a vegetable oil (emulphor-620), two detergents (Tween-20 and Tween-80), and two solvents [dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) a...

Proteases are widely used to remove affinity and solubility tags from recombinant proteins to avoid potential interference of these tags with the structure and function of the fusion partner. In recent years, great interest has been seen in use of the human rhinovirus 3C protease owing to its stringent sequence specificity and enhanced activity. Like other proteases, activity of the human rhino...

Escherichia coli mutants have been isolated that are permissive for the infection by T4 phage with deletion in the cistron for the phage lysozyme, the e gene. Some, but not all, of these mutants are simultaneously permissive for the infection by T4 phage defective in the t gene, the product of which has also been implicated in the release of progeny phages. Most of these mutants shared the foll...

Fractionation of cells into their subcellular components has long been a central approach in cell biology. Subcellular fractionation techniques have been used widely to study structure and function of organelles and subcellular compartments, as well as to examine the location, processing, and trafficking of molecular components. The object of most subcellular fractionation procedures is to obta...

Immobilized enzymes have been used extensively in the fields of food industry, materials processing, textiles, detergents, biochemical and chemical industries, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. Studies on immobilization of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase have been less extensive than those for other industrially applicable enzymes. Immobilization of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase has bee...

Partial resistance of cell membranes to solubilization with mild detergents and the analysis of isolated detergent-resistant membranes (DRMs) have been used operationally to define membrane domains. Given the multitude of detergents used for this purpose, we sought to investigate whether extraction with different detergents might reflect the same underlying principle of domain formation. We the...

The transcription of heat shock genes in response to physiological stress requires activation of heat shock transcription factor (HSF). Although the transcriptional response is most commonly induced by temperature elevation, the biochemical events involved in HSF activation in vivo can also be triggered at normal physiological temperatures by chemicals that inhibit metabolic processes. We have ...