Recombinant baculoviruses are widely used to express heterologous genes in insect cells (7,9). The baculovirus expression system has many advantages, such as the capacity for large DNA insertion, a high level of recombinant protein synthesis, and the production of proteins that are similar in biological activity, stability, and posttranslational modifications (e.g., glycosylation, phosphorylati...

DNA topoisomerase (topo) IIα is a major target for many anticancer agents. However, progress towards understanding how these agents interact with this enzyme in human cells and how resistance to these agents arises is greatly impeded by difficulties in expressing this gene. Here, we report on achieving a high level of expression of a full-length human topo IIα gene in human cells. We started wi...

The Gly42 f Val mutant of GiR1 was characterized structurally and biochemically to elucidate two important features of GiR1-catalyzed GTP hydrolysis. The crystal structure of the GTPγS-bound GVGiR1 protein demonstrates that the steric bulk of Val42 pushes the Gln204 residue into a catalytically incompetent conformation, providing a rationale for the diminished GTPase activity of this mutant. Th...

200 word) In this project, we studied the linear and nonlinear propagation of structured beams of ultrafast pulses. We have been taking advantage of the special characteristics of spatially-chirped beams, in which the frequency components cross each other at the focus of a lens. In this configuration, the pulse focuses temporally and spatially at the same time. We developed a theory for underst...