Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Commons^™

Development Of Fluorescence Based Approaches To Understand Astrocyte Biology In The Context Of Nicotine And Nicotinic Receptor Activity, Surya P. Aryal

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Smoking and tobacco use (STU) is a major global health problem and worldwide more than six million people die due to tobacco related diseases each year. Although majority of smokers try to quit smoking several times in their life, traditional therapeutic approaches, which focus only on neuronal cells, have a very low success rate. Understanding the effect of nicotine on glial cells, synaptic communication and blood vasculature in the brain can provide further insights on the neurobiology of substance abuse and can potentially help to design better therapeutic approaches. Glial cells are non-excitable cells in the brain which do not …

Sers For Protein Detection At A Single Molecule Level For Developing A New Medical Diagnostics Platform, Lamyaa Almehmadi

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A two-step process of protein detection at a single molecule level using Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) was developed as a new platform for medical diagnostics in this proof-of-concept study. First, a protein molecule was bound to a linker in the bulk solution and then this adduct was chemically reacted with the SERS substrate. Traut’s Reagent (TR) was used to thiolate Bovine serum albumin (BSA) in solution followed by chemical cross linking to a gold surface through a sulfhydryl group. A Glycine-TR adduct was used as a control sample to identify the protein contribution to the SER spectra. Gold SERS …

Applications Of Cell-Derived Vesicles: From Single Molecule Studies To Drug Delivery, Faruk H. Moonschi

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Single molecule studies can provide information of biological molecules which otherwise is lost in ensemble studies. A wide variety of fluorescence-based techniques are utilized for single molecule studies. While these tools have been widely applied for imaging soluble proteins, single molecule studies of transmembrane proteins are much more complicated. A primary reason for this is that, unlike membrane proteins, soluble proteins can be easily isolated from the cellular environment. One approach to isolate membrane proteins into single molecule level involves a very low label expression of the protein in cells. However, cells generate background fluorescence leading to a very low …

Laser-Assisted Single-Molecule Refolding, Rui Zhao

Wayne State University Dissertations

Non-coding RNAs must fold into precise secondary and tertiary structures in order to perform the biological functions. Due to the flexibility of RNA, the RNA folding energy landscape can be rugged and full of local minimum (kinetic trap). To provide a means to study kinetically trapped RNAs, we have developed a new technique combining single-molecule FRET detection with laser induced temperature jump. We have calibrated the magnitude of the temperature jump with 1˚C accuracy using gold micro-size sensor. The accuracy of temperature calibration was confirmed by close agreement between single-molecule and bulk DNA duplex melting experiments.

HIV 1 DIS RNAs …