BACKGROUND Functional Genomics, the systematic characterisation of the functions of an organism's genes, includes the study of the gene products, the proteins. Such studies require methods to express and purify these proteins in a parallel, time and cost effective manner. RESULTS We developed a method for parallel expression and purification of recombinant proteins with a hexahistidine tag (H...

A practically simple top-down process for the exfoliation of graphene (GN) and few-layer graphene (FLG) from graphite is described. We have discovered that a biocompatible amphiphilic pyrene-based hexahistidine peptide is able to exfoliate, functionalize, and dissolve few layer graphene flakes in pure water under exceptionally mild, sustainable and virtually innocuous low intensity cavitation c...

Many proteins that accumulate in the form of insoluble aggregates when they are overproduced in Escherichia coli can be rendered soluble by fusing them to E. coli maltose binding protein (MBP), and this will often enable them to fold in to their biologically active conformations. Yet, although it is an excellent solubility enhancer, MBP is not a particularly good affinity tag for protein purifi...

A surface plasmon resonance imaging-based Ni(2+)-iminodiacetic acid-coated gold chip system was developed to enable specific detection of a hexahistidine-tagged recombinant protein in crude extracts or in column chromatography fractions. This system is especially advantageous for high-throughput analysis of multiple proteins.

Fluorescent probes are essential for the exploration of protein function, detection of molecular interactions, and conformational changes. The nitrilotriacetic acid derivatives of different chromophores were successfully used for site-selective noncovalent fluorescence labeling of histidine-tagged proteins. All of them, however, suffer from the same drawback--loss of the fluorescence upon bindi...

Affinity tags have become powerful tools from basic biological research to structural and functional proteomics. They were widely used to facilitate the purification and detection of proteins of interest, as well as the separation of protein complexes. Here, we mainly discuss the benefits and drawbacks of several affinity or epitope tags frequently used, including hexahistidine tag, FLAG tag, S...

This paper introduces a new concept called controllable ring signature which is ring signature with additional properties as follow. (1) Anonymous identification: by an anonymous identification protocol, the real signer can anonymously prove his authorship of the ring signature to the verifier. And this proof is non-transferable. (2) Linkable signature: the real signer can generate an anonymous...

The paper deals with the long-term validation of the authen-ticity of electronic healthcare records (EHR). Although the attributes of data authenticity, i.e. integrity and origin ve-ri-fi-a-bi-lity, can be pre-served by digital signatures, the necessary period for the re-ten-tion of EHR is far beyond the lifespan of a simple digital signature. This lifespan is restricted by the va-li-di-ty peri...

This paper introduces a new concept called controllable ring signature which is ring signature with additional properties as follow. (1) Anonymous identifica-tion: by an anonymous identification protocol, the real signer can anonymously prove his authorship of the ring signature to the verifier. And this proof is non-transferable. (2) Linkable signature: the real signer can generate an anonymou...