From Hit to Live-Cell Target Engagement Assay: DNA-Encoded Library Screens and NanoBRET™ Dye

Monitoring and quantifying drug-target binding in a live-cell setting is important to bridging the gap between in vitro assay results and the phenotypic outcome, and therefore represents a crucial step in target validation and drug development (1). The NanoBRET™ Target Engagement (TE) assay is a biophysical technique that enables quantitative assessment of small molecule-target protein […]

Illuminating the Kinome: NanoBRET Target Engagement Technology in the Spotlight

Updated November 21, 2023 In the life of a cell, phosphorylation of proteins is an everyday occurrence. The transfer of a phosphate group, from a molecule such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to a specific functional group on a protein, is catalyzed by a protein kinase. The vast majority of protein kinases are classified as either […]

NanoBRET™ Assays to Analyze Virus:Host Protein:Protein Interactions in Detail

Recently, Gordon et al. published an atlas of protein:protein interactions of all proposed SARS-CoV-2 proteins expressed individually in HEK 293 cells (Table 1). The study tagged each of the viral proteins with an epitope tag and performed a pull-down of the expressed protein followed by trypsin digestion and mass spec analysis, a process referred to as affinity purification–mass spec analysis. The […]

CRISPR/Cas9, NanoBRET and GPCRs: A Bright Future for Drug Discovery

GPCRs G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a large family of receptors that traverse the cell membrane seven times. Functionally, GPCRs are extremely diverse, yet they contain highly conserved structural regions. GPCRs respond to a variety of signals, from small molecules to peptides and large proteins. Many GPCRs are involved in disease pathways and, not surprisingly, […]

Voted Drug Discovery and Development Product for 2018: NanoBRET TE Kinase Assays

NanoBRET™ TE Intracellular Kinase Assays are the first biophysical method to enable the quantitative determination of compound potency/affinity for specific kinase targets inside live cells.

Executing a NanoBRET™ Experiment: From Start to Data

This is a guest post from Katarzyna Dubiel, marketing intern in Cellular Analysis and Proteomics. “The objective of my experiment was to test the NanoBRET™ assay as if I was a customer, independent of the research and development team which develops the assay.” Designing and implementing a new assay can be a challenging process with […]

A NanoBRET™ Biosensor for GPCR:G protein Interaction with the Kinetics and Temporal Resolution of Patch Clamping

I confess that I struggled through biophysics, and my Bertil Hille textbook Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes lies neglected somewhere in a box in my basement (I have not tossed it into the recycle bin—I can’t bear too, I spent too much time bonding with that book in graduate school). My struggles in that graduate […]

Interrogating Protein Interactions: An Infographic for NanoBRET™ Assay Design

Yesterday my fellow blogger, Kari, posted a review of the ACS Chemical Biology paper describing a new BRET platform for analyzing protein-protein interactions. If you are interested in studying induction and inhibition of protein interactions in real time, take a look at the infographic below to learn how to develop a NanoBRET™ Assay to monitor your […]

About the Development of an Improved BRET Assay: NanoBRET

One of the more exciting reporter molecules technologies available came online in the past year, with the launch of the Promega NanoBRET™ technology. While it’s easy for me, a science writer at Promega, to brag, seriously, this is a very cool protein interactions tool. A few of the challenges facing protein-protein interactions researchers include: The ability to quantitatively […]

Uncovering Protein Autoinhibition Using NanoBRET™ Technology

In a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA article, Wang et al. used the principle of the Promega NanoBRET™ assay to understand how ERK1/2 phosphorylation of Rabin8, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor, influenced its configuration and subsequent activation of Rab8, a protein that regulates exocytosis. Rab8 is a member of […]