Epitope-tagging of proteins has become a widespread technique for the analysis of protein function, protein interactions and protein localization among others. Tagging of genes by chromosomal integration of PCR amplified cassettes is a widely used and fast method to label proteins in vivo. Different systems have been developed during years in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In the present s...

it is difficult to distinguish between clinically significant slowly-growing, non-pigmented mycobacteria, notably to separate m. aviumand m. intracellulare from one another and from m. scrofulaceum strains. the purpose of this study was to evaluate the extent to which 16s rrna sequencing could be used to highlight the taxonomic relationships of the mycobacterial strains, which are difficult to ...

The hypothesis that reactions associated with intracellular membranes enjoy a kinetic advantage from a reduced dimensionality for diffusion is inconsistent with available data on lateral diffusion rates, membrane-substrate affinities, and endogenous concentrations of enzymes and their aqueous substrates.

Monomeric fluorescent proteins of different colors are widely used to study behavior and targeting of proteins in living cells. Fluorescent proteins that irreversibly change their spectral properties in response to light irradiation of a specific wavelength, or photoactivate, have become increasingly popular to image intracellular dynamics and superresolution protein localization. Until recentl...

Ubiquitylation is a key regulator of protein trafficking, and much about the functions of ubiquitin ligases, which add ubiquitin to substrates in this regulation, has recently come to light. However, a clear understanding of ubiquitin-dependent protein localization cannot be achieved without knowledge of the role of deubiquitylating enzymes (DUBs). DUBs, by definition, function downstream in ub...

Intracellular transport of organelles and proteins is driven by multiple ATP-dependent processes. Recently in Cell, Guo et al. (2014) developed a technique, force-spectrum microscopy, to measure intracellular forces and demonstrate that large motion of cellular components can be produced by random ATP-dependent fluctuations within the cytoplasm.

The formation of the biophotonic gyroid material in butterfly wing scales is an exceptional feat of evolutionary engineering of functional nanostructures. It is hypothesized that this nanostructure forms by chitin polymerization inside a convoluted membrane of corresponding shape in the endoplasmic reticulum. However, this dynamic formation process, including whether membrane folding and chitin...