Successful urinary discrimination between calcium oxalate kidney stone patients and healthy subjects using H NMR spectroscopy: Suggestion of a possible link to protein content.

Stone formation in the urinary tract is a multifactorial world-wide disease afflicting between 8 and 20% of population groups in different geographical locations. Discrimination between stone formers and healthy persons on the basis of urine composition remains a crucial goal among researchers. Since H NMR is able to monitor the metabolic function of the kidney we applied it to the urine of 60 stone formers (34 females, 26 males) and 38 healthy persons (14 females, 24 males).

Identification of soluble protein fragments by gene fragmentation and genetic selection.

We describe a new method, which identifies protein fragments for soluble expression in Escherichia coli from a randomly fragmented gene library. Inhibition of E. coli dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) by trimethoprim (TMP) prevents growth, but this can be relieved by murine DHFR (mDHFR).

Application of phage display to high throughput antibody generation and characterization.

We have created a high quality phage display library containing over 1010 human antibodies and describe its use in the generation of antibodies on an unprecedented scale. We have selected, screened and sequenced over 38,000 recombinant antibodies to 292 antigens, yielding over 7,200 unique clones. 4,400 antibodies were characterized by specificity testing and detailed sequence analysis and the data/clones are available online.

Multiplexed expression and screening for recombinant protein production in mammalian cells.

Background: A variety of approaches to understanding protein structure and function require production of recombinant protein. Mammalian based expression systems have advantages over bacterial systems for certain classes of protein but can be slower and more laborious. Thus the availability of a simple system for production and rapid screening of constructs or conditions for mammalian expression would be of great benefit.