Genetics & Molecular Biology
Ever wonder what the smallest protein is? Apparently it's TRP-Cage, a protein with only 20 amino acids derived from the saliva of Gila monsters.
Trp-cage - smallest protein
You can find the structure file and images in the PDB database (www.pdb.org) with PDB ID = 1L2Y. This highly stable mini-protein is important for studies of protein stability, protein folding, and 3D structure.
Even with this small size, it displays secondary structural elements, such as an alpha helix, found in many proteins. So far there are no known proteins with less than 20 residues, but we'll see what happens in…
It is very difficult to see some plus point in something good. It’s very easy to criticize.
All animals who have frontal eyes are fighter type like lion , tiger, and man also. Man is part of animal kingdom and not a super creation or master of creation
It is in his habit to quarrel. Perhaps he derives a pleasure to pick up a quarrel . Mahatma Gandhi gave a principle of non violence. How many want to follow it ? Where is eternal peace ?
If you are at peace with yourself you will be at peace with others.
All animals with eyes on both side of the nose are quite animals
e.g. birds . They don’t…
The longest human protein is Titin with 34,350 amino acids. The smallest human protein is 44 amino acids but it could be an abortive translation from the 5' UTR of another mRNA. The smallest functional polypeptide is glutathione with only three amino acids. BTW, proline is technically not even an amino acid much less a polypeptide. Chignolin is a man-made decapeptide so if you synthesize a GG dipeptide, it would be the smallest possible amino acid polymer.
If you remember your visit to an airport of Moskow, or Indira Gandhi Airport terminal 2 of yesteryears, or airports of even european countries some 20 or 30 years ago there was a distinct feeling where you have landed. There was reflection of culture of the region , its food, its local variety of handicrafts and a flair of the country quite apparent of your country of landing. It has changed. If you are guided to any airport of the world as far as I have seen and open your eyes after landingin some shopping area or lounge you can not tell where you are. Its an era of globalization. Same…
Scientists have altered cardiac muscle cells to make them controllable with light and showed an ability to cause conditions such as arrhythmia in genetically modified mice, which opens up new possibilities for researching the development and therefore treatment of arrhythmias. Tobias Brügmann and his colleagues from the University of Bonn’s Institute of Physiology I used a “channelrhodopsin” for their experiments - a type of light sensor. At the same time, it can act as an ion channel in the cell membrane because when stimulated with blue light, this channel opens, and positive ions flow…
During a meeting a senior person said he does not need extension any more as he has been asked to publish in a journal with a high impact factor This statement is not from any real situation but improvised to bring out a point. Good impact factor journals require hi degree of sophistication and genomic proteomic or metabolomic research or vast experience of dealing in modern areas. Life sciences journal by and large have lower impact factor as compared to Biophysics etc. I still remember my late Professor Dr Neumann advised one of my student who has worked in his laboratory on some salinity…
Stem cells help regenerate or repair damaged tissues, primarily by releasing growth factors that encourage existing cells in the human body to function and grow.
There has been an ongoing ethical controversy about human embryonic stem cell research but progress has been made nicely using adult stem cells, such as from marrow donors.
A barrier to progress in the field of regenerative medicine has been the difficulty of growing adult stem cells for clinical applications and because mesenchymal stem cells have a limited life span in laboratory cultures, researchers who use the cells in research…
Proteins are the heavy lifters of cells, doing numerous tasks, but how the shape of a protein determines function remains one of the most important questions in the physics of biology.
Proteins are not the static, Lego-like objects you might see in an x-ray photograph in a textbook, they are made from long chains of amino acids scrunched into various blobs and a protein is always changing to slightly different structural arrangements due to thermal motion of its atoms. Even a modest-sized protein like myoglobin has an unimaginable number of possible arrangements of its atoms and each of these…
Large number of transgenic crop plants have now been released for commercial production using transformation technologies. Virus-mediated, chemical mediated microinjection, electroporation, particle-bombardment and other transformation methods are routinely used. However, problems are associated with stable integration and reliable expression of the DNA after integration. Genetic analysis of plants is a basic requirement for studies in genetics and plant breeding. Marker, be it morphological, biochemical or molecular, play a key role in genetic studies. With the increasing availability of…
Plant Cell and Tissue Culture - A Tool in Biotechnology
Basics and Application
Series: Principles and Practice
Neumann, Karl-Hermann, Kumar, Ashwani, Imani, Jafargholi
2009, IX, 333 p. 153 illus., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-540-93882-8
This book provides a general introduction as well as a selected survey of key advances in the fascinating field of plant cell and tissue culture as a tool in biotechnology. After a detailed description of the various basic techniques employed in leading laboratories worldwide, follows an extended account of important applications in, for example, plant propagation…