• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.2665-2668
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• 2014

Aptamers are oligonucleotides or peptide molecules that are able to bind to their specific target molecules with high affinity via molecular recognition. In this study, we present development of aptamer-based precipitation assays (or simply aptamoprecipitation) for His-tagged proteins and thrombin to compare their purification efficiency with other conventional affinity precipitation methods. A crosslinking method was employed to immobilize thiol-functionalized aptamers onto the surface of polystyrene resins, enabling them to specifically bind to His-tag and to thrombin, respectively. The resulting aptamer-functionalized resins were successfully applied via a one-step experiment to purification of His-tagged proteins from complex E. coli and to thrombin extraction, exhibiting superior or at least comparable purification results to the conventional immobilized metal affinity precipitation or immunoprecipitation.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.82-85
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• 2012

The formation of zinc finger peptide-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) was examined using three different metal ion sources: $ZnCl_2$, $Zn(CH_3COO)_2$, and $Zn(OOC(CHOH)_2COO)$. For the four zinc finger peptides (Sp1-1, Sp1-3, CF2II-4, and CF2II-6) that bind only a single $Zn^{2+}$ in the native condition, electrospray of apo-zinc finger in solution containing $ZnCl_2$ or $Zn(CH_3COO)_2$ resulted in the formation of zinc finger-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes with multiple zinc ions. This result suggests the formation of nonspecific zinc finger-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes. Zn(tartrate), $Zn(OOC(CHOH)_2COO)$, mainly produced specific zinc finger-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes with a single zinc ion. This study clearly indicates that tartrate is an excellent counter ion in ESI-MS studies of zinc finger-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes, which prevents the formation of nonspecific zinc finger-$Zn^{2+}$ complexes.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.335-340
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• 2024

In this paper, we synthesized organic and inorganic hybrid materials to introduce antibody functionality to UIO-66 and incorporated them into a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) assay to enhance the sensitivity of detecting small molecules such as oxytocin. A biological marker peptide called oxytocin may help in the diagnosis of heart failure, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. To detect oxytocin at concentrations as low as a few femtomole (fM), we developed a surface sandwich assay utilizing a pair of oxytocin-specific antibodies for enhancing selectivity and one of metal organic frameworks [e.g., UiO-66-(COOH)₂] possessing high porosity and surface-area as a signal amplifier. Initially, real-time SPR assays were used to confirm that each selected oxytocin-specific antibody binds strongly to oxytocin and to different binding sites on oxytocin. One of these antibodies (e.g., anti-OXT[OTI5G4]) was immobilized on the surface of a thin gold chip. Upon sequential injecting of oxytocin and the other antibody (e.g., anti-OXT[4G11]) conjugated to UiO-66-(COOH)₂ onto the surface to form the surface sandwich complex of anti-OXT[OTI5G4]/oxytocin/UiO-66-(COOH)₂-anti-OXT[4G11]), SPR changes, which varied with oxytocin concentration, were then measured in real time. The results demonstrated that sensitivity was amplified by over a million-fold compared to assays without UiO-66-(COOH)₂, enabling oxytocin detection down to approximately 10 fM.