Biotechnology research is traditionally focused on individual microbial strains that are perceived to have the necessary metabolic functions, or the capability to have these functions introduced, to achieve a particular task. For many important applications, the development of such omnipotent…

The genetic code is said to be redundant in that the same amino acid residue can be encoded by multiple, so-called synonymous, codons. If all properties of synonymous codons were entirely equivalent, one would expect that they would be equally…

Notch signaling plays a critical role in cell fate determination and maintenance of progenitors in many developmental systems. Notch receptors have been shown to be expressed on hematopoietic progenitor cells as well as to various degrees in peripheral blood T…

Enzymes are powerful biocatalysts, however, so far there is still a large gap between the number of enzyme-based practical applications and that of naturally occurring enzymes. Multiple experimental approaches have been applied to generate nearly all possible mutations of target…

Cell factories are commonly microbial organisms utilized for bioconversion of renewable resources to bulk or high value chemicals. Introduction of novel production pathways in chassis strains is the core of the development of cell factories by synthetic biology. Synthetic biology…

BRCA1, a multi-domain protein, is mutated in a large percentage of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers.  BRCA1 is most often mutated in three domains or regions: the N-terminal RING domain, exons 11-13, and the BRCT domain.  The BRCA1 RING domain…

Proteins are the most multifaceted macromolecules in living systems and have various important functions, including structural, catalytic, sensory, and regulatory functions. Rational design of enzymes is a great challenge to our understanding of protein structure and physical chemistry and has…

Motility studies of cells often rely on computer software that analyzes time-lapse recorded movies and establishes cell trajectories fully automatically.  This raises the question of reproducibility of results, since different programs could yield significantly different results of such automated analysis.…