SNAP

Snapin: A protein with therapy potential for autism

Rutgers' Bonnie Firestein likens nerve cells to trees -- some are short and bushy with many branches while others are tall with a few branches coming out of one or two main trunks. Different branching patterns correlate with specific disorders and Firestein's quest is to discover how these dissimilar patterns come about and why. A new paper by Firestein and her colleagues at Rutgers, The S...

Scientists take 'snapshots' of enzyme action

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, the New York Structural Biology Center, and SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have determined the atomic crystal structure and functional mechanism of an enzyme essential for eliminating unwanted, non-nutritional compounds such as drugs, industrial chemicals, and toxic compounds from the body. The detailed mechanism of action...

Gene Bridges And Covalys To Develop Restriction-Enzyme-Free SNAP-tag Gene Fusion Kits

Gene Bridges and Covalys Biosciences AG today announced a collaboration to develop "Copy & Paste" DNA engineering kits to generate SNAP-tag fusion proteins based on Gene Bridges' Red/ET recombination technology. Gene Bridge's Red/ET cloning system does not require restriction enzymes and allows the engineering of large DNA sequences, such as BACs, (bacterial artificial chromosomes) with singl...

High resolution 'snapshots' detail dynamics of a cocaine antibody

Cocaine-binding antibodies have shown some promise in their ability to neutralize cocaine toxicity, but their binding ability is severely impaired by high concentrations of the drug. A catalytic monoclonal antibody such as 7A1, on the other hand, has the ability to regenerate after each new dose of the drug, making it far more effective than others in metabolizing cocaine. The study, which...

Fast-freeze snapshot yields new picture of nerve-muscle junction

When nerve cells excite muscle fibers to flex, getting synaptic proteins and components into the right place can mean the difference between feats of strength or lapses of drowsy lethargy. Several proteins that have been shown to be major players in synaptic transmission have now been studied using a flash-freeze physical-fixation technique that reveals new details of their location and fu...

New species of snapper discovered in Brazil

A popular game fish mistaken by scientists for a dog snapper is actually a new species discovered among the reefs of the Abrolhos region of the South Atlantic Ocean. The international science journal Zootaxa announced the discovery of Lutjanus alexandrei, a new snapper species that belongs to the Lutjanidae family, by researchers Rodrigo Moura of Conservation International (CI) and Kenyon...