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The Sceptical Chymist | Enzymes, macrocycles, and fluorescent dyes, oh my!

Published in Chemistry

Go to the profile of Allison Doerr
Allison Doerr
Chief Editor, Nature Methods, Springer Nature
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In the August issue of Nature Methods, which just came out on Monday, we have an exciting and decidedly chemistry-based paper from Werner Nau and colleagues at Jacobs University Bremen in Germany (and it even made the cover!). The authors describe a new concept for enzyme assays using a macrocycle as a receptor for a fluorescent dye and for an enzyme product. When the enzyme arrives on the scene and begins converting the substrate (which does not interact with the macrocycle) to product, the product starts displacing the fluorescent dye from the macrocycle, causing a switch-on in fluorescence. Of course, the macrocycle and dye need to be carefully chosen for each application such that the dye is out-competed by the enzyme product, but once a suitable pair is found, it provides a simple and convenient readout for enzyme activity.

Check it out!

Also of interest: a Review on caged compounds and their application in living cells and an Article describing a rapid method for detecting infectious scrapie prion protein.

Go to the profile of Allison Doerr
Allison Doerr
Chief Editor, Nature Methods, Springer Nature
Allison has been an editor with Nature Methods since 2005, and chief editor since November 2018. She has been responsible for all areas of biochemistry for the journal, including structural biology and proteomics. Prior to her editorial career, she completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry at Princeton University, where she studied de novo protein design and protein-ligand interactions using NMR spectroscopy.

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