Protein Spy
Researchers at Rice University have a method to rapidly trigger the universal tagging of proteins being produced by a cell. The tagging method they use is like a switch. They tag proteins with a controllable enzyme switch. This allows researchers to get a snapshot of proteins being produced by a cell at any time. This is a divide and conquer kind of strategy.
What hypothesis was tested? The hypothesis that was tested was attach bio-orthogonal that is non-interfering an amino acids to transfer RNA. This gives a snapshot of total protein synthesis.
How was it tested? They tested this hypothesis by using an azidonorleucine amino to tag proteins in Escherichia coli bacteria cells. The switch is controlled like a computer program. The switch only charges transfer RNA cells with azidonorleucine efficiently when the switch is synthesized and a chemical is present in the cell to flip the switch. Instead of physically separating a cell from a mixture to find the proteins being made, they can use this engineered switch to put what amounts to a fishhook on every proteins synthesized in a given cell. …show more content…
The hypothesis was supported because transfer RNA synthetase only adds the amino acid to the transfer RNA when it binds a chemical. When promoted, the transfer RNA with the bio-orthogonal amino acid, then that is used by ribosomes to insert the tag into proteins made in the cell. . “In human biology, a lot of the control comes at the DNA level, but over the past 20 years it’s become apparent that a lot of control comes at the protein level as well.” Said Johnathan Silberg according the