Syngene has announced that one of its G:BOXChemi imaging systems is being used at the Wageningen University & Research (UR) Centre in The Netherlands to visualise and analyse bacterial proteins as part of a research programme to understand the molecular mechanisms behind bacterial immune systems.
Scientists in microbiology at Wageningen UR are using a G:BOXChemi system to image chemiluminescence- and fluorescence-labelled Western blots of multifunctional protein complexes belonging to the CRISPR/Cas proteins. These proteins degrade foreign DNA, thus protecting bacteria from infection, and by studying them the scientists hope to unravel how bacterial immune systems function. Determining pathways of bacterial immunity could lead to a number of applications, such as being able to immunise important bacteria used in food production and large-scale fermentations against phage infection.
Raymond Staals, a researcher at Wageningen UR, said: “We undertake RNAi studies and then assess protein expression on Western blots. However, performing blots in our facility used to be a hassle as we had to develop X-ray films and then take photographs. Now we use the G:BOXChemi regularly to image agarose and acrylamide DNA or RNA gels and sometimes to image plate assays of bacteria expressing fluorescent luciferase. The system is very popular as many other researchers and students come to use the G:BOXChemi to image DNA gels as the quality of the images is excellent.”
www.syngene.com/g-box-chemi