Antibody Engineering-Based Approach for Hapten Immunometric Assays with High Sensitivity

Enzyme Mimics: Advances and Applications

Enzyme mimics or artificial enzymes are a class of catalysts that have been actively pursued for decades and have heralded much interest as potentially viable alternatives to natural enzymes. Aside from having catalytic activities similar to their natural counterparts, enzyme mimics have the desired advantages of tunable structures and catalytic efficiencies, excellent tolerance to experimental conditions, lower cost, and purely synthetic routes to their preparation. Although still in the midst of development, impressive advances have already been made. Enzyme mimics have shown immense potential in the catalysis of a wide range of chemical and biological reactions, the development of chemical and biological sensing and anti-biofouling systems, and the production of pharmaceuticals and clean fuels. This Review concerns the development of various types of enzyme mimics, namely polymeric and dendrimeric, supramolecular, nanoparticulate and proteinic enzyme mimics, with an emphasis on their synthesis, catalytic properties and technical applications. It provides an introduction to enzyme mimics and a comprehensive summary of the advances and current standings of their applications, and seeks to inspire researchers to perfect the design and synthesis of enzyme mimics and to tailor their functionality for a much wider range of applications.

Development of a photoreactive probe-based system for detecting heparin

We previously identified a peptide heparin-associated peptide Y (HappY) that binds specifically to heparin. In this article, we report a novel heparin detection system using chemically modified HappY as a probe. The photoreactive HappY probe was serially diluted and dispensed into a 96-well plate coated with biotinylated heparin. After ultraviolet irradiation, the HappY probe crosslinked to the heparin on the plate was detected with fluorescein isothiocyanate-conjugated streptavidin. Furthermore, the photoreactive HappY probe was used to stain cutaneous tissue sections obtained from dermatitis-affected or mastocytoma-affected cats and dogs. The photoreactive HappY probe stained limited resident mast cells in the connective tissue of skin compared with the anti-heparan sulfate monoclonal antibody 10E4, suggesting that the probe can be used to distinguish the structure of heparin in tissues. The interactions between glycosaminoglycans and proteins in vivo tend to be weak. Therefore, our method for enhancing such weak interactions may be a promising tool for intermolecular interaction studies in glycobiology research.