We used a force-measuring laser tweezers apparatus to determine the elastic properties of lambda-bacteriophage DNA as a function of ionic strength and in the presence of multivalent cations. The electrostatic contribution to the persistence length P varied as the inverse of the ionic strength in monovalent salt, as predicted by the standard worm-like polyelectrolyte model. However, ionic streng...

Multivalent molecular interactions can be exploited to dramatically enhance the performance of an affinity reagent. The enhancement in affinity and specificity achieved with a multivalent construct depends critically on the effectiveness of the scaffold that joins the ligands, as this determines their positions and orientations with respect to the target molecule. Currently, no generalizable de...

Despite their preclinical promise, few recombinant growth factors have been fully developed into effective therapies, in part, due to the short interval of therapeutic activity after administration. To address this problem, we developed nanoscale polymer conjugates for multivalent presentation of therapeutic proteins that enhance the activation of targeted cellular responses. As an example of t...

As an alternative brucellosis prevention method, we evaluated the immunogenicity induced by new multivalent DNA vaccines in BALB/c mice. We constructed the vaccines by fusion of BAB1_0273 and/or BAB1_0278 open reading frames (ORFs) from genomic island 3 (GI-3) and the Brucella abortus 2308 sodC gene with a link based on prolines and alanines (pV273-sod, pV278-sod, and pV273-278-sod, resp.). Res...

The development of carbon materials with desirable textures and new aqueous electrolytes is the key strategy to improve performance supercapacitors. Herein, a deep eutectic solvent (DES) was used for in situ templating material. A material characterized (XRD, N2-physisorption, FTIR, SEM EDS) as an electrode first time multivalent-based In performed using novel DES, which serves precursor genera...

This paper reports dissociation constants and "effective molarities" (M(eff)) for the intramolecular binding of a ligand covalently attached to the surface of a protein by oligo(ethylene glycol) (EG(n)) linkers of different lengths (n = 0, 2, 5, 10, and 20) and compares these experimental values with theoretical estimates from polymer theory. As expected, the value of M(eff) is lowest when the ...

Carbohydrates constitute the most abundant class of biomolecules on Earth. They are “global players” and indeed play many roles. They store energy and water. They serve as metabolic intermediates. They function as stable, raw materials or as intelligent, bioengineered products. They are even active in “social media”, that is, they mediate communication between cells and they store information b...

Two T7OH/+ translocation-carrying male mice were used in an investigation into the relation between the segregation pattern of the translocation caused multivalent at anaphase I and the position of the only chiasma in a long interstitial segment. Moreover, the relation between meiotic stage (from early diakinesis to metaphase I) and chiasma movement was assessed. It appeared that pronounced mov...

Lipid-mediated delivery of DNA into cells holds great promise both for gene therapy and basic research applications. This paper describes the efficient and facile synthesis and the characterization of a new multivalent cationic lipid with a double-branched headgroup structure for gene delivery applications. The synthetic scheme can be extended to give cationic lipids of different charge, spacer...

Stem cell differentiation is regulated by complex repertoires of signaling ligands which often use multivalent interactions, where multiple ligands tethered to one entity interact with multiple cellular receptors to yield oligomeric complexes. One such ligand is Sonic hedgehog (Shh), whose posttranslational lipid modifications and assembly into multimers enhance its biological potency, potentia...