BIOTECHNOLOGY
FIG. 1: Fab fragment from papain digestion (left) and F(ab’)2 from pepsin digestion (right)
can fi nally lead to the production of a homogenous protein in suffi cient amounts for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as well as in structural studies. To date, there are several routes to
have an antibody fragment artifi cially synthesised. Several functional antigen- binding antibody fragments could be engineered by proteolysis of antibodies (papain digestion, pepsin digestions, or other enzymatic approaches), yielding Fab, Fv, or single domains (Fig. 1). During the past decade, advances
Antibody and its Fab fragment Full-length Antibody:
Antibody and its Fab fragment Fab fragment:
in recombinant antibody technology have greatly facilitated the genetic manipulation of antibody fragments. All target genes can now be cloned and expressed successfully as a fragment in bacteria, on mammalian cells, and even insect cells. One advantage of this technology is that it could retain the intact antigen-binding site (paratope) while reducing the size of the antibody molecule.
Shengnan Shao is with Sino Biological.
www.sinobiological.com
PIPETTES ENABLE MICROBIAL EVOLUTION RESEARCH I
ntegra’s Voyager adjustable tip spacing pipette and Viafl o lightweight electronic pipette are the ideal lab companions for agricultural research into microbial evolution. Bacterial evolution studies involve analysis of large sample numbers, requiring streamlined, reproducible pipetting processes to eff ectively characterise the features of diff erent strains. Dr Astrid Altamirano-Junqueira, who completed her doctoral studies into the evolution of bacterial motility in the School of Biological Studies at Reading University, discusses how these electronic pipettes aided her research: “My focus was on the eff ects of deleting the fl agella master regulator gene – FleQ – in Pseudomonas fl uorescens. I performed in-depth gene expression studies on more than 40 diff erent FleQ knockout P.
fl uorescens strains, and identifi ed a novel strain that had undergone a rewiring of
the nitrogen pathway to restore fl agella expression and motility. I then went on to explore how this new ‘swimmer’ strain was aff ected by nitrogen starvation.” Altamirano-Junqueira adds: “The
time savings that I gained from using the pipettes meant I could study more strains, as well as more culture conditions. This allowed me to gain as much information as possible for the strains, which was vital for multivariate analysis. “I was even able to identify a
novel ammonia transporter that, after genome sequencing, led to the discovery of a new strain. It’s thanks to my electronic pipettes that I could perform all the PCR experiments and screen over 40 strains in just two weeks – I’m incredibly thankful for the Voyager.”
For more information visit
www.integra-biosciences.com
www.scientistlive.com 39
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