A team of scientists at the University of Washington and the biotechnology company Illumina contain created an innovative tool to directly detect the fragile,single-molecule interactions between DNA and enzymatic proteins. Their approach provides a new platform to view and record these nanoscale interactions in genuine time. As they report Sept. 28 in Nature Biotechnology, this tool should provide fast and reliable characterization of the different mechanisms cellular proteins use to bind to DNA strands — information that could shed new light on the atomic-scale interactions within our cells and back design new drug therapies against pathogens by targeting enzymes that interact with DNA.
Source: washington.edu