The annual Nobel Prize holds as scheduled, and Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, by the discovery of cell autophagy mechanism. In the early 1950s, scientists in Belgium observed autophagic vacuole by electron microscope, and firstly put forward concept of "autophagy".Autophagy is a process of phagocytosing autologous cytoplasmic proteins or organelles, encapsulating them into vesicles and fusing with lysosomes, degrading the contents of lysosomes to achieve cellular homeostasis and organelle renewal. This procedure ended with a lysosomal closure chamber. Figure 1 graphically depicts the mechanism for autophagy......2016-12-15

Asprosin is a protein hormone that is produced by white adipose tissue in mammals, which is then transported to the liver and be stimulated for releasing of glucose into the blood stream. In the liver, asprosin activates rapid glucose release by a cAMP-dependent pathway. (Figure 1)Figure 1. Asprosin’s mode of action (Cited from cell ) This year, an article published in Cell reveals the discovery of Asprosin. The intention of this article is to study Neonatal Progeroid Syndrome (NPS), never thought in the process, they found a hormone - Asprosin, which is associated with type 2 diabetes. We will briefly introduce the discovery of this protein below. NPS is a genetic disorder, the pa......2016-12-15

With the consecutive improvement of life quality, there are more and more obese patients. According to the statistics, at least 2 million and 600 thousand people die of obesity each year. As one of the biggest killer of life, obesity can lead to a variety of metabolic diseases, including hypertension, coronary heart disease, diabetes and so on, which can seriously affect the health. In order to keep the obese people from disease, scientists pay more attention to research the mechanism and treatment of obesity. The AMPK signaling pathway can regulate the intracellular ATP supply as AMPK is an energy detector for intracellular ATP levels. Considering the central role of AMPK in regulatin......2016-12-15

Protein as the main executor of life activities,the research on its function and biological mechanism is explored in depth. So how to isolate and study a particular protein?The wide application of protein labeling technology can effectively solve this problem which makes many researchers get a headache. At present, some peptides and proteins are widely used for mass production of recombinant protein. In order to facilitate the protein expression, detection, tracing and purification, they are expressed with the target protein. This kind of polypeptide or protein is known as Protein Tag, such as MyC, His, GST, HA, etc.. The tag antibody can be highly specifically combined with the corres......2016-10-25

In last special subject we talked about the structural modification of small molecule haptenes, this part we will start discussing the choice of carrier proteins and coupling methods.Carrier protein is a kind of large molecule that can initiate immune reaction by itself, and it would be a totally artificial antigen after coupling of the carriers and small molecules. Carrier proteins commonly used include bovine serum albumin(BSA), keyhole limpet hemocyanin (KLH), ovalbumin(OVA), bovine thyroid globulin(BTG),etc.For selecting carrier protein, there are some main factors to be considered, such as its solubility, size, coupling groups, immunogenicity and cost price. At present bovine seru......2016-10-25

In vitro diagnosis(IVD) refers to the products and services that outside the human body, through detecting the human body samples (blood, body fluids, tissues, etc.) to obtain clinical diagnostic information, and then judge the disease or the body function. With the continuous development of science and technology, the in vitro diagnostic technique tends to be more and more simple, diversified, high throughput and precision. The development of in vitro diagnostic techniques is inseparable from the innovation of diagnostic reagents, which have gone through four technological revolution as chemical, enzyme, immunoassay and probe technology. Among them, the development of the immune detec......2016-10-25