This paper discusses biomolecular switches used as chemosensors. Biomolecules undergo binding-induced conformational changes to transduce chemical information into biochemical outputs. The efforts here are aimed at generating artificial chemical sensors that change their conformations upon ligand binding. These biomolecular switches allow for rapid and selective transduction of binding events in a single step. Their application has implications for the diagnosis of genetic and infectious diseases.
I was really impressed by the Tsein lab's calcium biosensor. They found a way to translate conformational change into fluoresence change, by putting a CFP on one end and YFP on the other. I guess its a similar idea to BRET or FRET. Seeing all the different metabolites they can detect made me want to play around with biosensors...I mean experimen and hypothesize.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds really neat...biosensors research could provide so much insight into the structure/function relationship of biomolecules.
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