Three Types of Services Related to Proteins You Have to Know in Laboratory

Posted by Mandy Scott on July 29th, 2016

Abstract

Researching and studying proteins’ functions are the basic requirement before performing protein related experiments in laboratory. There are three types of services that you should learn in order to performing your project well. They are protein methylation, protein N-acetylation and protein/peptide synthesis.

Protein Methylation

Due to the influence of histone methylation and demethylation on the ability of DNA transcription, methylation has become a famous mechanism of epifenetic regulation. The transfer of one-carbon methyl groups to nitrogen or oxygen to amino acid side chains can increase the hydrophobicity of the protein and neutralize a negative amino acid charge when bounds to carboxylic acids. Methylation, whose S-adenosyl methionine is the primary methyl group donor. Methylation occurs so often, therefore SAM has been suggested to be the most-used substrate in enzymatic reactions after ATP. In addition, O-methylation is reversible potentially, when N-methylation is irreversible.

Protein N-acetylation

Protein n-acetylation, also known as the transfer of an acetyl group to nitrogen, almost occurs in eukaryotic proteins through both irreversible and reversible mechanisms. In the reaction system, before replacing the amino acid with an acetyl group from acetyl-CoA, the cleavage of the N-terminal methionine is required, which is done by N-acetyltransferase enzymes. This is called co-translational acetylation. Chromosome immunoprecipitation, as well as mass spectrometry, can be utilized to detect protein acetylation by using acetyllysine-specific antibodies.

Protein/peptide synthesis

Protein/peptide synthesis is also the basic requirement in some protein experiments. And even the customized synthesized peptide can be now offered by some biotech companies. If the target proteins are endogenous for the organism and n the blank matrix is not easy to obtain to prepare calibrating samples, and then the stable isotope labeled peptides or proteins can work well. At the same time, the naive peptides/proteins of high purity can be also utilized as reference standards without any isotope labeling. Considering this situation, the customized synthesized peptide can save a lot of time and cost for you.

These three types of services related to proteins used in experiments are well-known among scientists, not only because of their short processing time, but also their unbelievable potentials in biological research use.