Update

Here we have been working on our protocol. If anyone would like to review our protocol and give feedback, let us know (nenufarmoleculesforlife@gmail.com).  We are learning as we go along. It seems we scare some people, in that they think we are going to be bringing viruses into the lab. We don't have that as part of our experiment, it is simply to work on expression and purification of a peptide. Testing its antiviral properties is outside the scope of the experiment and if we are successful, we will look for a partner lab to work with that has the proper clearances to work with viruses. We'll probably repeat this statement more than once just to be clear.  A week ago we went into production on our film to raise crowd-sourced funding for our experiment. Award winning filmmaker Jazmin Jamais shot it. We are now working furiously on post-production.  May is going to be a busy month.  

Healing with light.

It's well known that people who live in the north, where the winters are long and dark, are more at risk for depression.  Here's an interesting paper on the use of optogenetics for treatment of depression.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3868662/

Protein folding revealed by steric trapping

Using a new method called steric trapping, researchers have been able to elucidate the complex process of protein folding. Folding errors result in proteins clumping together; formation of plaques; such as those found in Parkinson’s disease and cystic fibrosis; and cell degeneratation.
Heedeok Hong, a chemist at Michigan State University (MSU), explained, “Our novel tool set can potentially be applied to analyze how disease mutations impact the structural and functional integrity of pathologically important membrane proteins. This knowledge will ultimately help in designing treatments that can stabilize defective membrane proteins for their optimal function.”
The team focused on membrane proteins because about 30% of all proteins reside in this oily layer that encapsulates cells. Using the new procedure, the researchers attached two small molecular tags to a protein in its folded form, and then added bulky objects that bind the tags. The large attachments unravel the protein to its unfolded state.
Steric trapping can test the stability of membrane proteins, show what unfolded membrane proteins look like and reveal how individual amino acids that are building a protein work together to maintain its folded shape.
“Using this novel tag-binding system … our team was able to observe and test membrane proteins without disturbing their native environment,” Hong said. “Controlling folding and unfolding while keeping their native membrane environment has been one of the major methodological hurdles to solve the membrane protein folding problem.”

source:
http://www.americanlaboratory.com/184881-Steric-Trapping-Sheds-Light-on-Protein-Folding/

more here:
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/msu-tackles-mystery-of-protein-folding/

and dive deeper here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/46/19802.full

very long skinny molecule: a course on DNA

Take the full course here