分类: 生物学 >> 生物物理学 提交时间: 2016-05-12
摘要: We demonstrate the use of cryogenic super-resolution correlative light and electron microscopy (csCLEM) to precisely determine the spatial relationship between proteins and their native cellular structures. Several fluorescent proteins (FPs) were found to be photoswitchable and emitted far more photons under our cryogenic imaging condition, resulting in higher localization precision which is comparable to ambient super-resolution imaging. Vitrified specimens were prepared by high pressure freezing and cryo-sectioning to maintain a near-native state with better fluorescence preservation. A 2-3-fold improvement of resolution over the recent reports was achieved due to the photon budget performance of screening out Dronpa and optimized imaging conditions, even with thin sections which is at a disadvantage when calculate the structure resolution from label density. We extended csCLEM to mammalian cells by introducing cryo-sectioning and observed good correlation of a mitochondrial protein with the mitochondrial outer membrane at nanometer resolution in three dimensions.
分类: 生物学 >> 生物物理学 >> 肿瘤学 提交时间: 2016-05-05
摘要: Wilms' tumors are one of the most common malignant, solid intra-abdominal tumors observed in children. Although potential tumor markers have been found, inflammatory cytokines interfere with the process of specific protein identification. The present study was undertaken to identify post-traumatic stress-related factors of Wilms' tumors and to verify the accuracy of early-stage tumor-specific serum protein markers. Serum samples were screened for differentially-expressed proteins using surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). Potential markers were isolated and purified using solid-phase extraction (SPE) and SDS-PAGE. Following enzymatic digestion of the protein samples, the peptide fragments were detected with high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The obtained peptide mass fingerprint was searched in the Swiss-Prot protein sequence database via the Mascot search engine. Differentially-expressed proteins were verified using western blot analysis. Differentially-expressed proteins with a mass/charge of 5,816 were screened out using SELDI-TOF-MS, and significant differences between the tumor and control groups, and the trauma and control groups were observed. Target proteins were isolated and purified using SPE and SDS-PAGE. Thioredoxin 1 (Trx1) was found to be differentially expressed. In the serum of children with Wilms' tumors, there was an increase in the level of the post-traumatic stress-related inflammatory factor, Trx1, as compared with the normal control group. Thus, the results of this study indicate that Trx1 presents a potential post-traumatic stress-related factor of Wilms' tumors.