Diatom-based label-free optical biosensor for biomolecules.

Diatoms are unicellular algae, which fabricates ornate biosilica shells called frustules that possess a surface rich in reactive silanol (Si-OH) groups. The intrinsic patterned porous structure of diatom frustules at nanoscale can be exploited in the effective detection of biomolecules. In this study, the frustules of a specific diatom Amphora sp.

Molecular docking studies of protein-nucleotide complexes using MOLSDOCK (mutually orthogonal Latin squares DOCK).

Understanding the principles of protein receptor recognition, interaction, and association with molecular substrates and inhibitors is of principal importance in the drug discovery process. MOLSDOCK is a molecular docking method that we have recently developed. It uses mutually orthogonal Latin square sampling (together with a variant of the mean field technique) to identify the optimal docking conformation and pose of a small molecule ligand in the appropriate receptor site.

Protein-ligand docking using mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLSDOCK).

The theoretical prediction of the association of a flexible ligand with a protein receptor requires efficient sampling of the conformational space of the ligand. Several docking methodologies are currently available. We have proposed a docking technique that performs well at low computational cost.