Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

I was just inquiring if anyone who has the knowledge in Biochemistry or who understands the basics of DNA could help me. I wanted to know why different sources of DNA yield out different amounts of DNA. I've tried the extraction process http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/units/activities/extraction/ But I was hoping to justify why. I understand that different contents in comparing with Banana, Broccoli, Strawberries and Kiwi Fruit all yield various amounts of DNA. My thoughts are that they have different content of carbohydrates, proteins, water and fats which alter the amount of DNA. But I'm only limited to that for the moment, could anyone emphasize to a furt…

Hi, can anyone tell me how nitric oxide[NO] causes programed cell death by blocking the FAS pathway.

Hi everyone, I hope this is the correct section of the forum - if it isn't please could someone advise which section is most appropriate? I have a few questions regarding active transport & osmosis. With potato pieces in sucrose, the water moves from the potato to the sucrose as there are fewer water molecules in the sucrose. Can we assume from this that the potato has no need for the water that it is releasing via osmosis? If it needed it, it could use active transport techniques to reatain it's own water plus acquire more from the sucrose? when we use a weaker sucrose we find that the potato does acquire extra water via osmosis. So, this it seems is…

I am writing a laboratory report on isolation and quantfication DNA from corn using gel electrophoresis. and I have to discuss each step in the procedure. Can you give me a link to a good reference for this? I can't seem to find one.

Hi all, I came across an ID50 literature value of #ug/ml for an inhibitor. I wanted to convert this value to M (molar concentration). Is this the right way: # x 10^-6 g/ml divided by molar mass of the inhibitor x 1000 = (ans)M ?

Hi everyone, I am new in Q-PCR, and using My own enzymes and dNTP mix. I do have everything what are in Kit contents but not SYBR Green buffer. I need SYBR Green buffer's recipe to start my experiment. I will be very glad if someone helps me with the recipe. thanks mutation

I would like to know how come when we separate proteins in velocity sedimentation centrifugation (i.e using a sucrose gradient), larger proteins move faster than smaller proteins, but, if you separate proteins in SDS-PAGE, larger proteins move slower than smaller proteins. If we would have tried to separate proteins which were treated with SDS, by velocity sedimentation, would the larger protein move slower than the smaller, like in SDS-PAGE ?. My hunch is that if you talk about globular proteins, then the larger the protein, the faster it goes through the gel, but if you talk about filamentous proteins (SDS causes all proteins to become that way), then the larger…

I currently have a requirement to have a number of custom polyclonal antibodies produced! In the past I have used a company in Belgium but was not at all impressed by them! Ideally I would like to use a UK based supplier due to the superior ethics, but do not know who to choose? Does anyone have any experience with UK suppliers? Many Thanks C

Hi, Today you use an antibiotic, but the next day that antibody will not work. Because Bacteria's have ability to mutate quickly and somehow it will develop an enzyme to destroy the antibody. So Is there any better way to kill the bacteria permanently like attacking the cell parts which do not mutate or else this drama will go forever.

Hi, I'm looking for the "best" method to separate lipid vesicles and unbound protein. The situation is as follows: Some protein gets reconstituted on the vesicle, but, of course, some residual protein won't reconstitute (reconstitution in this case has an efficiency of ~80%). Now I need to remove the unbound protein (a monomer of ~35 kDa) from the solution without diluting it too much. Any hints / recommendations? TIA Christian

As probably a lot of you know, dinitrophenol is a mitochondrial uncoupler that works via dissipating the proton gradient over the mitochondrial membrane. The thing is, wouldn't this also effect pH? I'm doing experiments with DNP that affect channel activation, and I assume it's via oxidative stress but actually, now I think about it, it could act via minor changes in pH (the channels are very pH sensitive). Thing is, I'm not totally sure how DNP, if at all, would effect pH, when there's multiple layers of mitochondrial membrane etc., and how much it would effect it. Does anyone have any ideas? Or know of anyone who's investigated this before?

Yeah, I know I'm prolly beating a dead horse with a stick here, but i was just wondering if there was anything new on the "Are virus' actually living?" debate....? I'm trying to learn about biology/microbiology, but I'm not very deep in if you know what I mean.

hi, anyone could shed some light on this puzzle pls, how to estimate when in evolution did a ncestral protein arise, in other words, How old is the ancestral protein likely to be? detail as bellow, there is a amino-acid sequence of part of the AntP gene product , KRGRQTYTRYQTLELEKEFHFNRYLTRRRRIEIAHAL Use this to do a BLAST search to find other proteins related to Drosophila AntP. First open the BLAST page at NCBI. Choose the Standard Protein Blast option (BlastP), and copy and paste the sequence into the search box. Click "Blast!" to do the search, then click the Format button to see the results. This will give a long list of proteins that match the sequence, …

Hello all, I was wondering, very generally, what common biomolecules (DNA, RNA, ATP, ADP, inorganic phosphate, etc) precipitate in acid? And what is the basis for this? Thanks!

hi all: I am working with universal primers for bacteria and I came a cross some primers that are like follwing: F984GC (position:968 to 984) R1378 (position: 1378 to 1401) this pair of primers is used to amplify 16S rDNA gene. the question is that if the forward primer starts at nucleotide 968 and stops at nucleotide 984 and the reverse primer starts and finishes at different site so, these two segments do not hybridize with each other. since the sense strand segment is different than the antisense strand segment then the amplification using this pair of primer will result in two segments. is what I am saying correct, please tell me if I am wrong or if you …

Hey all, Since RNA polymerase, and a bunch of other enzymes, are needed to translate DNA into proteins, where does the first RNA polymerase of a new organism come from? My guess is that it must be inherited from one of the parents. If so, which single RNA enzyme gets chosen to be passed down to the offspring, or is a new one synthesized from the DNA just before the gamete is made? Are there cases where a defective enzyme has been passed down and no DNA translation took place? My lecturer did not have the answer to these questions and I couldn’t find much on Google (probably because I couldn't phrase it properly in the search).

Recently I have noticed that there is an exclusive portal for antibodies. This might be an interesting portal to antibody researchers. Antibody Directory - an exclusive portal for antibodies with a broad collection of research antibodies available across the globe. It provides keyword searchable list of more than 100 thousand antibodies (with detailed technical info & company catalogues) from over 350 suppliers.

Hello everybody, I am trying to create a dataset of signal anchor proteins of the type II. These are proteins which posses a signal peptide but which will be retained in the ER membrane due to a lacking cleavage site. I have already done some SRS searches on SwissProt and applied some own parsers. But apparently there are not that many proteins with a high confidence for being a real signal anchor ;-( Does anybody of you know a database where I could find these kind of proteins? Or even better, does anybody work on this subject and like to help me out a bit? Thank you very much in advance, cu Ben

If I have a enzyme 50kDa and I know that the concentration of said enzyme is 140pmol/mg in a total protein conc of 12.785 mg/ml how do I convert the amount of enzyme to grams? Further, if I add 100ul of the total protein to a total volume of 2000ul, how much enzyme will I have in the containter???? I am unterly confused when it comes to unit conversion!!!

Hi, I am curious if there is any correlation between the rate of half lives within the meterials that a cell is comprised of and the life span of that cell. (dead = inanimate). One would think such a thing might give evidence that conciousness exists in all matter, due to the prominent possibility that organisms require material to maintain an equalibrium of half-lives. Sorry if I have asked any arbitrary questions. I don't know very much about what I am asking. -Jon Kuder

I am just not understanding how these things work. Using this plot as an example (attached). Can someone explain how one would go about generating this. I mean obviously you dont have the raw data to generate it, but in theory? Thanks.

I will be amplifying the variable regions for 16S rDNA and looking for Universal primers for bacteria only can some one help me with this please!!!!!!!!!!!!\ I looked up some articles but i got confused wether those primers are used for conserved regions that are the same among all bacteria or not. thanks

Hi there, I believe that life span of a person is measured on the respiration counts it intakes through out the life. If so then how can ones life span can increase or decrease by taking special food contents.. Thanks........

Life on earth and of course evolution can be studied via the chemical composition of organisms. Such is a prominent aspect of various fields such as molecular biology, genetics, and biochemistry. My question I guess is that life seems to be pretty dependent on the non metals group from the periodic table overall. That such elements like oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon play key roles in life being around currently giving the composition of life. Now I know that a possibility of life at one time existing on mars might be around to find at some point. My question I guess is without knowing other or alien forms of life and working with what we have does the fact that life se…

Hi all! I have a new protein sequence and I would like to know if someone have tried or know some program that could predict theoritically the 3D structure from the aminoacid sequence. I found some stuff at google.. but those are freaking complicated... Thanks