Previously, we reported a non-chromatographic protein purification method exploiting the highly specific interaction between the dockerin and cohesin domains from Clostridium thermocellum and the reversible aggregation property of elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) to provide fast and cost-effective protein purification. However, the bound dockerin-intein tag cannot be completely dissociated from t...

HYPOTHESIS Elastin-like protein (ELP) hydrogel helps maintain the three-dimensional (3-D) cochlear structure in culture. BACKGROUND Whole-organ culture of the cochlea is a useful model system facilitating manipulation and analysis of live sensory cells and surrounding nonsensory cells. The precisely organized 3-D cochlear structure demands a culture method that preserves this delicate archite...

Millions of Americans suffer from dry eye disease, and there are few effective therapies capable of treating these patients. A decade ago, an abundant protein component of human tears was discovered and named lacritin (Lacrt). Lacrt has prosecretory activity in the lacrimal gland and mitogenic activity at the corneal epithelium. Similar to other proteins placed on the ocular surface, the durabi...

Bypassing the blood-brain barrier is one of the primary considerations when designing compounds intended to function in the central nervous system (CNS). Intranasal (IN) administration of otherwise blood-brain barrier impermeable molecules can result in high CNS concentrations and low systemic accumulation, indicating that IN administration may be a useful method of delivering therapeutics to t...

PURPOSE To evaluate the predictability of the refractive correction achieved with a positional accommodating intraocular lenses (IOL) and to develop a potential optimization of it by minimizing the error associated with the keratometric estimation of the corneal power and by developing a predictive formula for the effective lens position (ELP). MATERIALS AND METHODS Clinical data from 25 eyes...

Immobilization of growth factors to polymeric matrices has been a common strategy in the design of tissue engineering scaffolds to promote tissue regeneration, which requires complex cell signaling events with the surrounding matrix. However, the use of large protein growth factors in polymeric scaffolds is often plagued by immunogenicity, short in vivo half-lives, and reduced bioactivity. To a...

We introduce a novel heuristic global optimization method, energy landscape paving (ELP), which combines core ideas from energy surface deformation and tabu search. In appropriate limits, ELP reduces to existing techniques. The approach is very general and flexible and is illustrated here on two protein folding problems. For these examples, the technique gives faster convergence to the global m...

Integration of a pharmacist role into the United Kingdom core healthcare services became better recognized in recent years. The General Pharmacy Council is modernizing pharmacy education through introduction foundation year, replacing pre-registration moving to five-year from four-year degree, and proposed hands-on undergraduate placements across five Experiential learning (ELP) are not compone...