New Products
Sunrise Science Products announced last week the availability of its DUALmembrane screening system for discovering integral membrane protein interaction partners.
Using the system, integral membrane proteins can be screened without the traditional issues of protein solubility and nuclear localization, Sunrise Science said. Full-length membrane proteins, including those with multiple transmembrane domains, can be screened without truncation or selection of specific subdomains.
The system allows full-length membrane bait proteins to be screened against a library of cDNA-expressed prey proteins to identify interactions. The technology takes advantage of a split-ubiquitin activation mechanism in which a first protein the bait is fused to the C-terminal half of ubiquitin, and a second protein the prey is fused to the mutated ubiquitin N-terminus. Interaction between bait and prey results in translocation of an artificial transcription factor to the nucleus, where it activates a reporter gene.
Nonlinear Dynamics has launched an updated version of TL120, a software solution for the analysis of 1D gel data.
The new release of TL120, formerly known as Phoretix 1D, incorporates an extended set of image editing tools, along with enhanced gel visualization and improved usability options, said Nonlinear.
Sigma-Aldrich has launched PathFinder, a free online collection of interactive biological signaling and metabolic pathways, at http://sigma-aldrich.com/pathfinder. The resource provides links to appropriate products from Sigma-Aldrich, including small molecules, antibodies, enzymes, QPCR components, and siRNAs for gene knockdown. PathFinder, co-developed with Protein Lounge, currently includes 20 pathways, but is expected to include more than 100 signal transduction pathways when completed later this year.
The University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have released FABLE (Fast Automated Biomedical Literature Extraction) v1.0, a software system for identifying genes and proteins in Medline, at http://fable.chop.edu. The software performs document retrieval of Medline abstracts for queries of genes, transcripts, and proteins by automatically annotating text. The system is optimized for human genes.
Movers & Shakers
Walter Birchmeier has been appointed the new scientific director of the Max Delbr ck Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch. The three-year position began Jan. 1.
Birchmeier is former deputy chairman of the MDC executive board and has served as interim director since April 2004.
He received a PhD in biology from the University of Z rich.