Where Proteins Meet

Courtesy of Pierce Biotechnology

Pierce Biotechnology has expanded its repertoire of protein chemistry products with the new ProFound Protein Interaction Mapping Kit, which helps researchers to pinpoint where protein partners come together. The technique takes advantage of a unique cleaving agent and bypasses the need for more complex approaches such as nuclear magnetic resonance or X-ray crystallography, says Patti Domen, a senior research scientist who designed and tested the product at Pierce's headquarters in Rockford, Ill.

The ProFound kit is based on the work of Claude Meares, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Davis. Ten years ago, Meares and colleagues showed that an iron-chelating agent called FeBABE cleaves proteins at sulfhydryl groups on cysteine residues, producing a group of fragments that demarcates where the protein interacts with DNA or other polypeptides.

With Pierce's new mapping system, one protein, the "bait," is treated with FeBABE, while the second, the...