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[
Anal Biochem,
1974]
A nephelometer for measuring nematode populations is described in which a standard 18 mm culture tube is illuminated from below, and four selenium photocells are placed radially at 90 degrees about the tube. This design minimizes fluctuations in readings due to movement of the nematodes at low population densities.
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Anal Chem,
2021]
The use of quality control samples in metabolomics ensures data quality, reproducibility, and comparability between studies, analytical platforms, and laboratories. Long-term, stable, and sustainable reference materials (RMs) are a critical component of the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) system; however, the limited selection of currently available matrix-matched RMs reduces their applicability for widespread use. To produce an RM in any context, for any matrix that is robust to changes over the course of time, we developed iterative batch averaging method (IBAT). To illustrate this method, we generated 11 independently grown <i>Escherichia coli</i> batches and made an RM over the course of 10 IBAT iterations. We measured the variance of these materials by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and showed that IBAT produces a stable and sustainable RM over time. This <i>E. coli</i> RM was then used as a food source to produce a <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i> RM for a metabolomics experiment. The metabolite extraction of this material, alongside 41 independently grown individual <i>C. elegans</i> samples of the same genotype, allowed us to estimate the proportion of sample variation in preanalytical steps. From the NMR data, we found that 40% of the metabolite variance is due to the metabolite extraction process and analysis and 60% is due to sample-to-sample variance. The availability of RMs in untargeted metabolomics is one of the predominant needs of the metabolomics community that reach beyond quality control practices. IBAT addresses this need by facilitating the production of biologically relevant RMs and increasing their widespread use.
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[
Anal Biochem,
1994]
mRNA can be copied into cDNA with the use of reverse transcriptase so that the relative abundance of individual mRNAs is reflected in the cDNA product. With further manipulation a replica of the mRNA expression pattern can be duplicated into a radioactive double-stranded DNA probe. DNA from a series of genes inserted into plasmids can be fixed to a membrane using a slot blot manifold and probed with the RNA-derived DNA probe. The intensity of the hybridization signal for a given gene is a result of its relative abundance in the RNA-derived DNA probe. Quantitation can be achieved through the use of housekeeping genes as baseline monitors. Inclusion of vector sequences can negate any spurious hybridization to vector rather than insert sequences. We have successfully used this method to obtain gene expression patterns for RNA isolated from diverse sources including rodent tissues, various cell lines, and Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans samples. Northern blots have verified the results obtained. The pattern of expression of many genes can be determined from as little as 10 micrograms of total RNA, making this method ideally suited for studies in which RNA is rare or in short supply.
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[
Methods Biochem Anal,
2006]
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[
Methods Biochem Anal,
2005]
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[
Anal Bioanal Chem,
2010]
Glycosylation is, by far, one of the most common and important post-translational modifications and becomes a target for proteomic research. A key challenge in glycoproteome research is the development of fast and effective enrichment strategies for high-throughput glycosylation analysis. Different kinds of glycan-capturing anchors have been developed and successfully applied to glyco-specific enrichment in large-scale glycosylation identification in the past few years. In this paper, we highlight several examples on various types of enrichment methods that have been utilized to specifically capture glycopeptides/glycoproteins for subsequent mass spectrometric analysis.
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[
Anal Chem,
2013]
Sample size determination is a key question in the experimental design of medical studies. The number of patients to include in a clinical study is actually critical to evaluate costs and inclusion requirements to achieve a sufficient statistical power of test and the identification of significant variations among the factors under study. Metabolic phenotyping is an expanding field of translational research in medicine, focusing on the identification of metabolism rearrangements due to various pathophysiological conditions. This top-down hypothesis-free approach uses analytical chemistry methods, coupled to statistical analysis, to quantify subtle and coordinated metabolite concentration variations and eventually identify candidate biomarkers. The sample size determination in metabolic phenotyping studies is difficult considering the absence of a priori metabolic target. This technical note introduces a data-driven sample size determination for metabolic phenotyping studies. Starting from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra belonging to a small cohort, metabolic NMR variables are identified by the statistical recoupling of variables (SRV) procedure. A larger data set is then generated on the basis of Kernel density estimation of SRV variable distributions. Statistically significant variations of metabolic NMR signals identified by SRV are assessed by the Benjamini-Yekutieli correction for simulated data sets of variable sizes. Simulated model robustness is evaluated by receiver operating characteristic analysis (sensitivity and specificity) on an independent cohort and cross-validation. Sample size determination is obtained by identifying the optimal data set size, depending on the purpose of the study: at least one statistically significant variation (biomarker discovery) or a maximum of statistically significant variations (metabolic exploration).
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[
Anal Biochem,
1976]
An ordinary spectrophotometer was used to study growth rates and increases in population size of nematodes by optical density measurements of nematodes suspended in 30-40% sucrose (w/v) solutions. The sucrose solution retarded the movement of nematodes in suspension and thereby decreased the fluctuations normally observed in optical density. This method was effectively used to study growth rates and increases in population numbers of a free-living nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. This procedure was also used to quantitate Ascaris lumbricoides eggs in a given sample. The limitations of this method when employed for establishing total nematode counts in a growing culture by direct spectrophotometric readings are
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[
Anal Chem,
2019]
Protein footprinting coupled with mass spectrometry is being increasingly used for the study of protein inter-actions and conformations. The hydroxyl radical footprinting method, fast photochemical oxidation of proteins (FPOP), utilizes hydroxyl radicals to oxidatively modify solvent accessible amino acids. Here, we describe the further development of FPOP for protein structural analysis in vivo (IV-FPOP) with Caenorhabditis elegans. C. elegans, part of the nematode family, are used as model systems for many human diseases. The ability to per-form structural studies in these worms would provide insight to the role of structure in disease pathogenesis. Many parameters were optimized for labeling within the worms including the microfluidic flow system and hydrogen peroxide concentration. IV-FPOP was able to modify several hundred proteins in various organs within the worms. The method successfully probed solvent accessibility similar to in vitro FPOP demonstrating its potential for use as a structural technique in a multi-organ system. The coupling of the method with mass spectrometry allows for amino acid residue-level structural information, a higher resolution than currently available in vivo methods.