background: holothuroids (sea cucumbers) are members of the phylum echinodermata, which produce saponins. saponins exhibit a wide spectrum of pharmacological and biological activities. in this study, we isolated the crude saponins from the body wall of the dominant iranian species of sea cucumber, holothuria leucospilota (h. leucospilota). the purpose of this study was to confirm the presence o...

background: alpinia galanga l. belonging to the family zingiberaceae is widely grown in the state of kerala, india. they are effective antioxidant and free radical scavenger under both in vitro and in vivo condition. the efficacy of the isolated flavonoids in conferring protection from radiation induced damages to genomic dna was studied. materials and methods: the bioflavonoids, galangin and k...

Background: Various MTT assay methods are proposed to obtain the cell sur- vival parameters.Objective: Determining the survival curve characteristics of two cancerous cells of interest based on a common and a novel MTT assay method after exposing them to ionizing radiation.Method: A common and a novel MTT assay method were used and compared for obtaining the F10B16 melanoma and 4T1 breast adeno...

The commonly used DNA polymerase assay is based on the detection of incorporated radiolabeled nucleotides in a DNA elongation reaction. It is laborious, radioactive, and can be highly variable. Here we report a nonradioactive fluorescence-based assay. The method consists of Cydye-labeled nucleotides, biotinylated primer, and a streptavidin-coated microplate. The assay is found to have sensitivi...

Protein kinases catalyze the transfer of the gamma-phosphate group from ATP to a serine, threonine or tyrosine residue of an acceptor protein. These enzymes play an important role in signal transduction. New inhibitors for these enzymes are actively being sought. In this article, we present a novel approach for detecting the activity of protein kinases, which could be useful for the high-throug...

Lipases and esterases (glycerol ester hydrolases, E.C. 3.1.1.-) are enzymes acting on the carboxyl ester bonds present in acylglycerols. They have been recognized as useful biocatalysts because of their wide-ranging versatility in industrial applications (2,5). However, the physical properties of lipids have caused a great difficulty in studying lipolytic enzymes (4). Traditionally, lipases hav...