6 research outputs found
Why bother with a COST Action? The benefits of networking in science
A COST Action is a consortium of -mainly- European scientists (but open to international cooperation) working on a common research area, with the same subject; COST provides funding to the Actions for networking and dissemination activities, thus the participating scientists must have secured research funding from other national or European sources. COST funding is in the scale of approximately 100 kEuros per year and in this vein, it is often criticized both in that it does not fund research and the core science and in that its funding is 'limited'. However, COST with its instruments is an integral pillar of the European Research Area, and it is through its mission that a variety of aspects of the research environment, fundamental to the success of the research, are catered for; these include scientific networking, collaboration/exchange/training and dissemination activities. Through fast procedures, proposals are evaluated and approved for funding in less than one year from submission date and Actions become operational immediately, managed on flexible management. In this way, COST contributes to reducing the fragmentation in European research investments, while opening the European Research Area to cooperation worldwide. COST Actions have an excellent record of building the critical mass for follow up activities in the EU FP or other similarly competitive programmes.© 2010 Kostelidou and Babiloni; licensee BioMed Central Ltd
Mutant forms of the extracellular domain of the human acetylcholine receptor γ-subunit with improved solubility and enhanced antigenicity
Development of <i>Escherichia coli</i> Strains That Withstand Membrane Protein-Induced Toxicity and Achieve High-Level Recombinant Membrane Protein Production
Membrane proteins perform critical
cellular functions in all living
organisms and constitute major targets for drug discovery. <i>Escherichia coli</i> has been the most popular overexpression
host for membrane protein biochemical/structural studies. Bacterial
production of recombinant membrane proteins, however, is typically
hampered by poor cellular accumulation and severe toxicity for the
host, which leads to low final biomass and minute volumetric yields.
In this work, we aimed to rewire the <i>E. coli</i> protein-producing machinery to withstand the toxicity caused by
membrane protein overexpression in order to generate engineered bacterial
strains with the ability to achieve high-level membrane protein production.
To achieve this, we searched for bacterial genes whose coexpression
can suppress membrane protein-induced toxicity and identified two
highly potent effectors: the membrane-bound DnaK cochaperone DjlA,
and the inhibitor of the mRNA-degrading activity of the <i>E. coli</i> RNase E, RraA. <i>E. coli</i> strains coexpressing
either <i>djlA</i> or <i>rraA</i>, termed SuptoxD
and SuptoxR, respectively, accumulated markedly higher levels of final
biomass and produced dramatically enhanced yields for a variety of
prokaryotic and eukaryotic recombinant membrane proteins. In all tested
cases, either SuptoxD, or SuptoxR, or both, outperformed the capabilities
of commercial strains frequently utilized for recombinant membrane
protein production purposes