Interdisciplinary Method Offers New Way To Study Ribozymes
...inois has opened a new avenue for spectroscopicand kinetic studies of metal-binding sites in ribonucleic acid enzymes (ribozymes). "Ribozymes show great promise for gene therapy of viral diseases,such as AIDS, due to their ability to bind and cleave viral RNA targetswith the help of metal ions," said Yi Lu,...Rapid Progress Reported On New Class Of Anti-Cancer Drugs
...ed mechanism of the enzyme, andCasey has performed kinetic and structure-function studies. In Casey's studies, he and graduate student Ruth Fu have producedversions of FTase with selectively altered amino acids in the active site totest hypotheses about which amino acid residues are important in bi......of enzyme kinetics. As a first application, the kinetic parameters of the cleavage reaction of a double-helix DNA catalyzed by a specific endonucleolytic enzyme were determined. Furthermore, catalytic activity down to enzyme concentrations of one picomole per liter was detected with high repro...... or the "T cell kinetics". "The difference between kinetic and static measurements in biochemistry isanalogous to motion pictures versus snapshots in photography," said BernardSonnenschein, Treasurer of Spectrumedix. "Just as a snapshot of a stormy sky ora baseball pitcher doesn't tell you what you really w...New Software Provides Quick Analysis of ion-Channel Activity
...tes of ion channels visible, it is possible to see kinetic details that in most proteins are invisible. An ion channel can pass more than 1 million ions per second,' Sachs said. That's a big enough output to measure in real time. The programs allow you to not only "watch" an ion channel molecule at work, th...