Many years ago, before the age of the internet, I picked up a collection of short stories called A Month of Mystery, edited by the film director Alfred Hitchcock. Most of the stories were humdrum, but one of them struck me as a masterpiece. It was by an American writer from the early 20th century named Melville Davisson Post. Although I never came across his writing again, his name stuck in my ...

Bending of purple membranes in dependence on the pH analyzed by AFM and single molecule force spectroscopy R.-P. Baumann, M. Schranz and N. Hampp, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2010 DOI: 10.1039/b919729j Bifunctional polyacrylamide based polymers for the specific binding of hexahistidine tagged proteins on gold surfaces Lucas B. Thompson, Nathan H. Mack and Ralph G. Nuzzo, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2...

We have expressed recombinant RNase P protein from Escherichia coli in high yield. A hexahistidine sequence at the amino terminus allowed protein purification in a single step. Mass spectrometry confirmed the molecular weight of the purified protein and indicated a purity of > 95%. Protein functionality was demonstrated by reconstitution of active holoenzyme.

Site-specific fluorescent labeling of proteins in vivo remains one of the most powerful techniques for imaging complex processes in live cells. Although fluorescent proteins in many colors are useful tools for tracking expression and localization of fusion proteins in cells, these relatively large tags (>220 aa) can perturb protein folding, trafficking and function. Much smaller genetically enc...

BACKGROUND Making peptide pharmaceuticals involves challenging processes where many barriers, which include production and manufacture, need to be overcome. A non common but interesting research area is related to peptides with intracellular targets, which opens up new possibilities, allowing the modulation of processes occurring within the cell or interference with signaling pathways. However,...

Recombinant clathrin protein fragments form assemblies that template gold nanocrystals in an array across the latticed surface. The nanocrystals exhibit unusual anisotropic morphologies with long range ordering, both of which are dependent upon the presence of a hexahistidine tag on the clathrin heavy chain fragments.