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Whole Cell Protein Lab Report

Decent Essays
Molecules found in nature (termed “natural products”) are a rich source of compounds with biological activities that are useful as drugs. Marine organisms are a particularly good source of natural products. Imagine that you are a marine biologist searching for new natural products for use as anticancer drugs. While diving at a coral reef near Tahiti, you notice an unusual sponge that you have never seen before. You collect a sample, return to your lab and make a whole cell protein extract.

1. Come up with an experimental design to see if this sponge has anticancer properties.

Making a whole cell protein extract:

Living cells should be cultured on petri dishes and then incubated with a tracer in order for downstream flux analysis. Once the metabolic processes have been quenched, the next step is to lyse the cells, separating both the polar and non-polar metabolites from the other cellular substances at the same time. After these steps, the cells are shaken to completely lyse the membranes allowing for a more efficient extraction of all possible biomolecules. After shaking, there should be a clear separation between the polar and non-polar phase for the metabolites, with a well-defined interphase containing proteins and nucleic acids. After centrifugation, the different phases are now separated, and each one can be sampled for further analysis
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During the process of RNA interface long double stranded RNA is cut into small pieces by an enzyme known as “Dicer”. Those small pieces bind with proteins known as the Argonaute proteins. After this binding takes place one of the double stranded RNA becomes removed which leaves the remaining strand to bind to messenger RNA target sequences. Once they are bound, the protein can either recruit certain factors to help regulate it, destroy it, or cleave the messenger
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