Acceleration of catalysis in dihydrofolate reductase by transient, site-specific photothermal excitation.

We have studied the role of protein dynamics in chemical catalysis in the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), using a pump-probe method that employs pulsed-laser photothermal heating of a gold nanoparticle (AuNP) to directly excite a local region of the protein structure and transient absorbance to probe the effect on enzyme activity. Enzyme activity is accelerated by pulsed-laser excitation when the AuNP is attached close to a network of coupled motions in DHFR (on the FG loop, containing residues 116-132, or on a nearby alpha helix). No rate acceleration is observed when the AuNP is attached away from the network (distal mutant and His-tagged mutant) with pulsed excitation, or for any attachment site with continuous wave excitation.

Characterizing the Surface Coverage of Protein-Gold Nanoparticle Bioconjugates.

Functional enzyme-nanoparticle bioconjugates are increasingly important in biomedical and biotechnology applications such as drug delivery and biosensing. Optimization of the function of such bioconjugates requires careful control and characterization of their structures and activity, but current methods are inadequate for this purpose. A key shortcoming of existing approaches is the lack of an accurate method for quantitating protein content of bioconjugates for low (monolayer) surface coverages.

A rapid ambient ionization-mass spectrometry approach to monitoring the relative abundance of isomeric glycerophospholipids.

Glycerophospholipids with two, non-equivalent fatty acyl chains can adopt one of two isomeric forms depending on the relative position of substitutions on the glycerol backbone. These so-called sn-positional isomers can have distinct biophysical and biochemical behaviors making it desirable to uniquely assign their regiochemistries. Unambiguous assignment of such similar molecular structures in complex biological extracts is a significant challenge to current analytical technologies.

Combining liquid chromatography with ozone-induced dissociation for the separation and identification of phosphatidylcholine double bond isomers.

Revealing the inherent molecular diversity of lipid biology requires advanced analytical technologies. Distinguishing phospholipids that differ in the position(s) of carbon-carbon double bonds within their acyl chains presents a particular challenge because of their similar chromatographic and mass spectral behaviours. Here-for the first time-we combine reversed-phase liquid chromatography for separation of isomeric phospholipids with on-line mass spectral analysis by ozone-induced dissociation (OzID) for unambiguous double bond position assignment.

Emerging mass spectrometry-based technologies for analyses of chromatin changes: analysis of histones and histone modifications.

Mass spectrometry (MS) is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for the analysis of posttranslational modifications (PTMs) of proteins, and particularly histone PTMs that regulate physiological processes. The more traditional bottom-up approach of searching for modifications on peptides rather than intact proteins (top-down) has proven useful for finding phosphorylation, acetylation, and ubiquitination sites. With the use of modern instrumentation and various MS-based techniques, peptides and their PTMs can be characterized in a high-throughput manner while still maintaining high sensitivity and specificity.