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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Prof. Kevin Plaxco, University of California-Santa Barbara
Inspired by nature: using protein regulatory mechanisms to build better biosensors
Chemistry and Biochemistry Special Seminar
Recent years have seen the development of a broad class of optical and electrochemical sensors in which the binding of a specific molecular target is signaled via a large-scale conformational change in a protein- or nucleic-acid-based receptor. The reagentless, rapidly reversible nature of this signaling mechanism supports continuous, real-time measurement of a wide variety of analytes, and, when coupled to electrochemical read-outs, its extraordinary selectivity allows this detection to be performed in even the most grossly complicated samples, such as flowing, undiluted blood serum. Like all processes reliant on single-site binding, however, these sensors still suffer from two potentially significant limitations: the useful dynamic range of single-site receptors is centered at a fixed target concentration (defined by the receptors dissociation constant) and spans a fixed width (defined by the hyperbolic shape of the Langmuir isotherm). In this talk, I describe the various mechanisms that evolution has invented in order to circumvent these very same limitations (e.g., allostery, cooperativity, etc.), and demonstrate their value in improving the utility of a wide range of artificial biosensors.
For more information contact Prof">mailto:paul.goldbart@physics.gatech.edu">Prof. Paul Goldbart (404 894-5200).
