The Protein Man's Blog | A Discussion of Protein Research

As you are no doubt aware, carrier proteins play a significant role in antibody production. While immunogenic peptides are generally considered to be good epitopes by themselves, they are too small and lack the additional motifs required to link with class II molecules and T-cell receptors. Thus, they do not have the ability to boost the antibody response.

The main challenge during protein expression and purification is prevention of protein degradation. Whether it is an E.coli expression system or insect or mammalian, protein degradation should be minimized or avoided during purification of proteins. Protein expression at lower temperatures sometimes help in preventing the proteins from degrading. During cell lysis, proteins are exposed to harsh external conditions which result in degradation. Main reason for the protein degradation is the presence of various proteases in the cell itself.

While phenol extraction is one of the commonly used methods in purifying DNA samples (i.e., removing proteins from cell lysates during DNA preparation), some people do not fully understand how and why it works. Read on to learn and appreciate how phenol extraction works.

Since the development of cell culture techniques, many modifications are being added regularly to make the conditions controlled on a micro-environment level.  With the transitioning research towards drug discovery, it has become imperative to study the mechanisms of cellular development and the responses at a “micro level” regulated both at spatial and temporal switches.