Creative Bios

  Antibodies (or immunoglobulins) are Y -shaped glycoproteins released by the immune system  to detect and bind to "foreign" substances , known as " antigens ", triggering a cascade of actions to destroy these foreign invaders. Scientists would develop different antibodies for research use, which basically can be classified into primary and secondary antibodies . However, how to choose the right type of antibodies for different immunoassays in experiment procedures, such as western blotting (WB), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), and immunoprecipitation (IP), is one of the most common questions for green hands in the laboratory.   P rimary A ntibod y vs. Secondary Antibody   Antibodies could be categorized into two types based on the binding capability and experimental applications— primary   antibodies   and  secondary antibodies.   The main difference between these two types of antibodies is that primary antibody binds specifically to ...

  I nfection of β-herpesvirus h uman cytomegalovirus (HCMV) could be life-threatening or cause life-long suffering in the majority of humans. Moreover, the viral vertical transmission during pregnancy leads to most congenital birth defects. However, treatment and prevention options currently available are extremely   limited.   Challenges  in Studying HCMV–host Cell Interactions   More than 235 kbp of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA)  in HCMV make s the largest known genome of human herpesviruses. Besides, HCMV is similar to other herpesviruses with complicated transcriptional architecture, including alternative transcription start sites, alternative splicing events, and polycistronic transcripts. The complex transcriptional architecture enables strict temporal control of gene expression and the possibility of generating multiple distinct proteins from a single genomic locus. The complexity is further increased by host cellular heterogeneity and differences in i...

  Cancer is a condition characterized by uncontrollable cell growth or reproduction in a specific part of the body, which will ultimately invade surrounding tissues and metastasize to distant sites. Most of the time, cancer has been advanced and possibly spread throughout the body by the time it's diagnosed. Therefore, cancer diagnosis and treatment is a competition against time, for which efforts have been made to find informative biomarkers, such as mutated nucleic acids, secreted proteins, and tumor cells, that can indicate cancer at the relatively early stage.   Researchers at the Concordia University recently published a study in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics , which introduced a new liquid biopsy approach using lab-on-a-chip  technology, aiming at detecting cancer prior to the forming of a tumor.   M icrofluidic Chip to  Capture Cancer Biomarkers   Th is liquid biopsy method is developed on the basis of a microfluidic chip targeting extrac...