Transcription factors bind specifically to their target elements in the genome, eliciting specific gene expression programs. The nuclear factor-?B (NF-?B) system is a family of proteins comprising inducible transcription activators, which play critical role inflammation and cancer. NF-?B members function as dimers with each monomeric unit binding ?B-DNA. Despite available structures various com...

The emergence of DNA as the predominant hereditary material of life has necessitated the evolution of proteins whose sole function is the maintenance and care of these vital molecules. In a typical cell, there is a wide array of proteins with specialized functions in DNA metabolism that allow the cell to maintain and replicate its genome. In order to copy or make repairs to DNA, the double heli...

The Saccharomyces cerevisiae CDC43 gene product is involved in establishing cell polarity during the cell-division cycle. When grown at restrictive temperatures, temperature-sensitive cdc43 mutants are unable to form buds and display delocalized cell-surface deposition [Adams et al., J. Cell Biol. (1990) in press]. We have isolated a cdc43-complementing plasmid from a yeast genomic-DNA library ...

Nucleic acid-based biosensors for the detection of specific proteins combine typical programmability synthetic DNA systems with artificially controlled DNA-protein communication. The high-affinity interaction between a target protein and ligand, such as an aptamer sequence, or double stranded domain, small peptide, is paired nature-mimicking molecular mechanism allowing probing, processing, tra...