1.
Ultrafast Fluorescence Spectroscopy via Upconversion and Its Applications in Biophysics.
Cao, S, Li, H, Zhao, Z, Zhang, S, Chen, J, Xu, J, Knutson, JR, Brand, L
Molecules (Basel, Switzerland). 2021;(1)
Abstract
In this review, the experimental set-up and functional characteristics of single-wavelength and broad-band femtosecond upconversion spectrophotofluorometers developed in our laboratory are described. We discuss applications of this technique to biophysical problems, such as ultrafast fluorescence quenching and solvation dynamics of tryptophan, peptides, proteins, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), and nucleic acids. In the tryptophan dynamics field, especially for proteins, two types of solvation dynamics on different time scales have been well explored: ~1 ps for bulk water, and tens of picoseconds for "biological water", a term that combines effects of water and macromolecule dynamics. In addition, some proteins also show quasi-static self-quenching (QSSQ) phenomena. Interestingly, in our more recent work, we also find that similar mixtures of quenching and solvation dynamics occur for the metabolic cofactor NADH. In this review, we add a brief overview of the emerging development of fluorescent RNA aptamers and their potential application to live cell imaging, while noting how ultrafast measurement may speed their optimization.
2.
Protein Remote Homology Detection Based on an Ensemble Learning Approach.
Chen, J, Liu, B, Huang, D
BioMed research international. 2016;:5813645
Abstract
Protein remote homology detection is one of the central problems in bioinformatics. Although some computational methods have been proposed, the problem is still far from being solved. In this paper, an ensemble classifier for protein remote homology detection, called SVM-Ensemble, was proposed with a weighted voting strategy. SVM-Ensemble combined three basic classifiers based on different feature spaces, including Kmer, ACC, and SC-PseAAC. These features consider the characteristics of proteins from various perspectives, incorporating both the sequence composition and the sequence-order information along the protein sequences. Experimental results on a widely used benchmark dataset showed that the proposed SVM-Ensemble can obviously improve the predictive performance for the protein remote homology detection. Moreover, it achieved the best performance and outperformed other state-of-the-art methods.
3.
Unified superresolution experiments and stochastic theory provide mechanistic insight into protein ion-exchange adsorptive separations.
Kisley, L, Chen, J, Mansur, AP, Shuang, B, Kourentzi, K, Poongavanam, MV, Chen, WH, Dhamane, S, Willson, RC, Landes, CF
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2014;(6):2075-80
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Abstract
Chromatographic protein separations, immunoassays, and biosensing all typically involve the adsorption of proteins to surfaces decorated with charged, hydrophobic, or affinity ligands. Despite increasingly widespread use throughout the pharmaceutical industry, mechanistic detail about the interactions of proteins with individual chromatographic adsorbent sites is available only via inference from ensemble measurements such as binding isotherms, calorimetry, and chromatography. In this work, we present the direct superresolution mapping and kinetic characterization of functional sites on ion-exchange ligands based on agarose, a support matrix routinely used in protein chromatography. By quantifying the interactions of single proteins with individual charged ligands, we demonstrate that clusters of charges are necessary to create detectable adsorption sites and that even chemically identical ligands create adsorption sites of varying kinetic properties that depend on steric availability at the interface. Additionally, we relate experimental results to the stochastic theory of chromatography. Simulated elution profiles calculated from the molecular-scale data suggest that, if it were possible to engineer uniform optimal interactions into ion-exchange systems, separation efficiencies could be improved by as much as a factor of five by deliberately exploiting clustered interactions that currently dominate the ion-exchange process only accidentally.
4.
[Separation of proteins on microchip electrophoresis and its comparison with DNA migration].
Liu, C, Xu, X, Zhang, J, Chen, J
Se pu = Chinese journal of chromatography. 2010;(3):296-300
Abstract
The efficient separation of six standard proteins on a home-made poly (dimethylsiloxane) microchip with an auto-deducting background diode laser induced fluorescence detector was accomplished within 6.4 min under the sieving matrix of 10 g/L hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC), 1 g/L sodium dodecyl sulphonate (SDS), 40 mmol/L phosphate buffer at pH 7.0. The experimental results showed that the reproducibility of protein separation was satisfactory and the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of protein migration time were less than 10%. The migration times of the proteins are analyzed by a quantitative mathematical model of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) proposed by ourselves previously. The results showed that the migration character of SDS-protein complexes was similar with DNA. However, the linear relationships between the mobilities of SDS-protein complexes and their relative molecular mass as well as electric field strength became worse, which indicated the mathematical model for DNA separation should be revised before it is used for protein separation.