Is this alpha-bungarotoxin workflow something thats translatable to other proteomics research?
The way that it can translate is that we know a lot about the sequence of amino acids that are the target for bungarotoxin binding, and so our lab and a number of other labs have been able to introduce that sequence into other proteins, so in that sense it can be translated into other systems. Some people call this alpha-bungarotoxin binding site BBS. We’ve sometimes referred to it as a pharmatope because we’ve been able to introduce it into regions of a receptor where not only the bungarotoxin bind but also causes a pharmacological effect or inhibits the protein, so it’s not only binding. It could be extended to other proteins. It would have to be done through a recombinant expression system or knock-in. It’s a fair amount of work, but it can be done, and then you can use this as a tag or a hook to pull out those proteins. Were there other approaches that would be useful for other researchers? The other big boost to this work was the availability of the knockout mouse that had the alp
