Laboratory Products
High Sensitivity of Nano Instrument Proves Essential for Protein Aggregation Studies
Jul 07 2010
Dr Martin Muschol, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida’s (USF) Department of Physics and his team are carrying out important research to gain a better understanding of protein aggregation phenomena, including protein crystallisation and amyloid fibril growth. Using the Zetasizer Nano ZS, from Malvern Instruments, the USF researchers have been able to perform temperature controlled static and dynamic light
scattering (DLS) measurements of protein hydration, protein interactions and aggregation kinetics in vitro.
“By enabling temperature controlled measurements, the Zetasizer Nano ZS is particularly suited to our work here at USF,” said Dr Muschol. “With it we have been able to monitor the effect on the hydration of proteins by salt ions in solution, measuring the hydrodynamic radius of proteins down to plus/minus one tenth the diameter of a water molecule. Interestingly we found that neither chaotropic or cosmotropic salt ions affected overall protein hydration up to salt concentrations of 1M.” Having published several papers in the past year alone, data gathered by Dr Muschol and his team will be used to develop models for protein fibril formation, a behaviour thought to trigger degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.
Dr Muschol’s team has also had noticeable success in using the Zetasizer Nano ZS to study the nucleation of gold nanoparticles. DLS separatesout the background scattering from small molecular species in gold sols and was therefore able to detect nucleation at a significantly earlier stage than has been possible with other approaches.
Digital Edition
Lab Asia 31.2 April 2024
April 2024
In This Edition Chromatography Articles - Approaches to troubleshooting an SPE method for the analysis of oligonucleotides (pt i) - High-precision liquid flow processes demand full fluidic c...
View all digital editions
Events
InformEx Zone at CPhl North America
May 07 2024 Pennsylvania, PA, USA
May 14 2024 Oklahoma City, OK, USA
May 15 2024 Birmingham, UK
May 21 2024 Lagos, Nigeria
May 22 2024 Basel, Switzerland