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High-throughput sequencing of eukaryotic, viral, and bacterial genomes provides a huge database of proteins with potential for structure-function analysis. In response to this opportunity, structural genomics projects have been initiated world-wide with the aim of establishing high-throughput structure determination on a genome-wide scale. Crucial to this effort has been the development of protein production technologies for the high-throughput cloning, expression, and purification of proteins. Large-scale structural genomic projects were initiated in the US and Europe, and all have emphasized parallel processing, both in terms of molecular cloning, expression, and purification, driven by the need to accommodate relatively large numbers of potential targets for structural biology at an acceptable cost. This has led to varying degrees of automation and most of the groups involved have set up semiautomated liquid handling systems to carry out some or all of their protocols. However, the protocols can equally well be carried out manually with appropriate equipment, for example multichannel pipette dispensers. The motivation to implement automation is largely to enable processes to be scaleable and sustainable as error-free operations. This chapter reviews the technical developments that have come from structural proteomics and provides protocols for carrying out cloning, expression, and purification procedures in a relatively high-throughput (HTP) and parallel approach.

Interest in processes at the nexus of host–microbe–metal interactions has risen as a result of advancements in the study of metallomics, proteomics, and genomics. These emerging fields have given rise to new developments in powerful analytical methods and technology for studying the identity, distribution, quantity, trafficking, fate, and effects of trace metals in biological systems. Applications of these advanced techniques to the study of metabolic cycles are yielding results and have placed scientists at the threshold of major paradigm shifts in our understanding of the relationships between homeostatic mechanisms of trace metals and pathogenesis of infectious diseases. Fields present at this Forum included chemistry, biology/biochemistry, toxicology, nutrition, immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, environmental and occupational health, as well as environmental and veterinary medicine. Participants were tasked with using their knowledge to discuss how the metabolic cycles of trace metals relate to the pathogenesis of disease during infection. The stimulating dialog that ensued covered a wide range of views, insights, and perspectives on current knowledge and raised important open questions that should be addressed by future research initiatives.

This concluding chapter summarizes what we know and what future directions will help our understanding. It argues that greater phylogenetic breadth is required in future studies of amphibians, and that physiology is at the heart of any complete understanding of amphibian declines occurring worldwide. It concludes with a plea for collaboration and integration of different levels of biological organization in future studies.

The role of integrative approaches to supportive care in urology is as controversial today as at any time in the history of medicine. At present, however, people are witnessing the emergence of a new, unified scientific foundation that brings together the best of modern molecular medicine with the bioinformatics of integrative medicine. This chapter outlines a new bioinformatics model of integrative medicine that complements and is consistent with the molecular dynamics of modern medicine on the genomic, proteomic, physiological, and psychological levels. Much of integrative medicine remains controversial because the typical outcome research purporting to validate the top-down approaches of integrative medicine do not include the entire four-stage bioinformatics cycle of modern molecular medicine. Clinical-experimental research programs that document the efficacy of integrative medicine with the currently emerging standards of validation via genomic and proteomic microarray technology are now needed.

This chapter discusses approaches to understanding cellular ageing (senescence) through molecular biology approaches. Current scientific ideas surrounding the biological and evolutionary basis of senescence are discussed in this chapter, as are recent findings that demonstrate a strong contribution of senescent cells to age-related decline in health. A new approach to generating senescent cells is described, which accelerates cell ageing in the laboratory based on understandings of premature ageing human Werner syndrome, as is a proteomics approach to probing cellular senescence. The premise that ageing is a social construct is refuted from a biological basis, and the importance of approaches to tackling cellular senescence in the human body to improve the quality of later life is strongly advocated.

The biosciences are sometimes ‘activated and fashioned in articulation with neoliberal, entrepreneurial modes of participation’, but also, in simultaneous contrast, assembled as an echo of Merton’s CUDOS norms. This chapter asks how actors establish what counts as good and valuable biomedical science, and how they, in practice, establish what are acceptable relations between science and industry. The chapter shows how the studied actors use two main strategies to uphold a difference between science and industry, and proposes to describe these strategies as two different modes of purification: temporal purification and organizational purification. By introducing modes of purification the chapter highlights the multiplicity of strategies that are utilized to fashion acceptable science–industry relations.

The diverse phenotypes exhibited by marine invertebrate larvae are the result of complex gene-environment interactions. Recently, technological advances in molecular biology have enabled large-scale -omics approaches, which can provide a global overview of the molecular mechanisms that shape the larval genotype-phenotype landscape. -omics approaches are facilitating our understanding of larval development and life history evolution, larval response to environmental stress, the larval microbiome, larval physiology and feeding, and larval behavior. These large-scale molecular approaches are even more effective when combined with large-scale environmental monitoring and phenotypic measurements. Current -omics approaches to studying larvae can be improved by the addition of functional genetic analyses and the reporting of natural variation in gene expression between individuals and populations. Systems-level approaches that combine multiple -omics techniques will allow us to explore in fine detail the interactions of environmental and genotypic influences on larval phenotype.