creativebiostructure's blog

 

Creative Biostructure, a biotechnology company specialized in providing products and services in structural science, offers various thermodynamics analytical services to study the binding mechanism of biomolecules. Recently, Creative Biostructure enhanced its thermal gravimetric analysis services covering food, pharmaceuticals, polymers, as well as other materials.

 

Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TG or TGA) refers to a thermal analysis technique that measures the relationship between the mass of the sample to be tested and the temperature change under program-controlled temperature, and is used to study the thermal stability and composition of materials. It is worth mentioning that the definition of mass change rather than weight change is based on the fact that under the action of a magnetic field, when ferromagnetic materials reach the Curie point, although there is no mass change, there is apparent weightlessness.

 

TGA is a commonly used detection method in research and development and quality control. Thermogravimetric analysis is often used in combination with other analysis methods in actual material analysis to conduct comprehensive thermal analysis and analyze materials comprehensively and accurately.

 

Typical applications of TGA at Creative Biostructure include:

*Determining thermal stability—if a substance (such as ceramic or polymer) is thermally stable, no mass change will be seen.

*The most prevalent visible losses in TGA are oxidative mass losses, which are used to determine oxidative stability. As a result, it is critical to investigate the oxidation resistance of copper alloys.

*Compositional analysis-temperature and weight change of decomposition reactions can allow quantitative composition analysis.

*Determination of the purity of a mineral, inorganic compound, or organic material.

*Measurement of the weight of fiberglass and inorganic fill materials in laminates, plastics, paints and composite materials.

*Determination of water/ carbon content or other residual solvents in a material.

*Analysis of reactions with air, oxygen, or other reactive gases.

*Enhancement of product formulation processes

 

TGA equipment from Creative Biostructure can be used to ramp temperature from room temperature to 1000°C in various gas atmospheres such as nitrogen, air, or other inert gases. Furthermore, sample weight can range from 1 mg to 150 mg, with a sensitivity of 0.01 mg for weight change.

 

Protein Thermal Shift Assay, Surface Plasmon Resonance, Isothermal Titration Calorimetry, Differential Scanning Calorimetry, Saturation-Transfer Difference and Bio-Layer Interferometry (BLI) Technology are those analytical methods for biophysical characterization of biomolecules available at Creative Biostructure.

 

To know more detailed information about the thermal gravimetric analysis service provided by Creative Biostructure, please visit https://www.creative-biostructure.com/maghelix%E2%84%A2-thermal-gravimetric-analysis-tga-216.htm

Gene editing is one of the latest breakthroughs in biology. The well-known CRISPR-Cas gene editing system confers immunity against foreign DNA to prokaryotes (organisms lacking a cell nucleus). Since the discovery of CRISPR gene editing technology, scientists have revealed how CRISPR-cas proteins evolved from their precursors. This knowledge will help them develop other small new genome editing tools for gene therapy.

 

At the University of Tokyo, Professor Osamu Nureki's team worked to identify the structure and function of proteins involved in genome editing. In a recent study by the team, they discovered the 3D structure of proteinTnpB, a possible precursor to the CRISPR-Cas12 enzyme. Their findings were published in Nature.

 

Previous research has shown that the TnpB protein may act like a pair of molecular scissors, cutting DNA with the help of a special type of non-coding RNA called omega RNA. But how RNA-guided DNA cleavage works, and its evolutionary relationship to the Cas12 enzyme, was unclear, prompting research from Nureki's lab. The first and most critical step in their understanding was to reveal the protein's structure.

 

To determine the three-dimensional structure of TnpB, the researchers extracted the TnpB protein from a bacterium called Deinococcus radiodurans and used cryo-electron microscopy. In cryo-electron microscopy, a protein sample is cooled to -196°C using liquid nitrogen and illuminated with an electron beam, revealing the protein's 3D structure.

 

The team found that the omega RNA in TnpB has a unique pseudoknot shape, similar to the guide RNA for the Cas12 enzyme. The study also revealed how TnpB recognizes omega RNAs and cleaves target DNA. When they compared the structure of this protein to the Cas12 enzyme, they learned two possible ways that TnpB might have evolved into a CRISPR-Cas12 enzyme.

 

"Our findings provide mechanistic insights into TnpB function and advance our understanding of the evolution of TnpB proteins to CRISPR-Cas12 effectors,” said Ryoya Nakagawa, one of the first authors of the research paper. He added that, “In the future, we will explore the potential application of tnpb-based gene editing technology.”

 

About the author

Collected by Creative Biostructure. Creative Biostructure has been working in the field of structural biology, membrane protein technologies, and structure-based drug discovery. We have expertise and experience in protein 3D structure prediction, protein modeling, and data analysis. Related services include: Rheo-NMR service, co-crystallization, membrane protein structure determination by solid-state NMR, stable isotope labeling for nucleic acids, crystallization chaperone strategies, and immunoelectron microscopy service.