Trypsin is the most commonly used protease for mass spectrometry-based proteomics experiments, because of its well defined specificity (it results in peptides with either lysine or arginine at the C-termini). Read more
People have already exploited the physical properties of plant cell walls in, for example, the production of paper, textiles and building materials. In the future it may be possible to engineer plants to produce other environmentally friendly / biocompatible materials with different performance characteristics. Read more
The three most viewed Exchange Protocols appear on the Protocol Exchange homepage; they don’t seem to change much, mostly because they are always highlighted! Read more
Nature Protocols likes to be part of the on-line community. In addition to the main journal (which, in 2006, was one the first NPG titles to have commenting on its articles), we have the Protocol Exchange, Stepwise (the blog), a twitter account and – the subject of today’s story – the Nature Protocols Discussion Forum. Read more
Membranes are amazing things: they surround the cell, the nucleus, and many other intracellular organelles. They keep stuff inside, they keep other stuff out. There are protocols for extracting them from cells, and there are protocols for making them from scratch. Read more
Those of us who did a few months of mass spectrometry lectures somewhere in an undergraduate course sometime in the last century, and have had our eyes elsewhere since then, might find that this field is completely unrecognisable. Perhaps, like me, you did some GC-MS of organic compounds extracted from some matrix or used MS as one of the analytical tools to characterise a compound you synthesised. The extension of these ideas to metabolomics-type experiments, and even proteomics is not conceptually challenging (though I admit that the finer points are rather complicated), but the idea that you could use mass spectrometry to get information about the secondary or tertiary structure of a protein or a protein complex might seem far-fetched. Read more
I am very excited about going to Florida for the Mass Spectrometry Technologies for Structural Biology Conference organised by the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. To celebrate, five of our related protocols will be free for a few weeks. Read more
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Introducing a third article type – the Protocol Extension
Membrane protein protocols
Label-free proteomics – the protease matters