Mempro™ Nanodisc Technology

During the past years, Creative Biostructure has developed an advanced MemPro™ Nanodisc Technology based on our outstanding MemPro™ Membrane Protein platform to solubilize and purify membrane proteins, promoting the development of membrane protein research greatly.

Figure 1. Assembing membrane proteins into nanodiscs. (Nature Structual & Molecular Biology, 2016)

Nanodisc technology is based on a novel membrane system, which is a non-covalent discoidal assembly of phospholipids and genetically engineered membrane scaffold proteins termed MSP. The nanodisc technology has firstly been developed based upon a modified sequence of the human serum apolipoprotein AI (APO-A1). The genetic modifications have been applied to increase the monodispersity of the formed discs, and furthermore to optimize the expression systems.

Each nanodisc is consist of a certain number of phospholipids in a phospholipid bilayer formation, which is enclosed by two membrane scaffold proteins molecules. These two membrane scaffold proteins located themselves at the rim of the bilayer, shielding the hydrophobic alkyl chains of the phospholipids of each leaflet from the aqueous environment in order to create a soluble nanoscale lipid bilayer.

Creative Biostructure has constructed a wide range of membrane scaffold proteins in different lengths to enable the possibility of nanodisc formations in different diameters. Furthermore, these constructs have been outfitted with various affinity tags at the end of the sequence such as Cys, 6xHis, and FLAG, etc. Creative Biostructure also has added a lot of specific protease cleavage sites to this part of the sequence for purpose of easily removing these affinity tag after purification.

The major application for our Mempro™ Nanodisc Technology is production of various functional membrane proteins in their native state. Creative Biostructure has successfully incorporated a wide range of membrane proteins into customized nanodiscs to solve their crystallized structures. Creative Biostructure can not only  isolate membrane proteins in different oligomeric states, but also control the surround microenvironment of the membrane proteins in order to investigate the binding affinity between the potential drug candidates and target membrane protein receptors, which is very important for novel drug development.

We also provide other highly customized Mempro™ Nanodisc products and services. Creative Biostructure is expertized in nanodisc preparation, membrane proteins reconstitution, nanodisc application, nanodisc characterization, and computational studies of nanodisc. Please feel free to contact us for a detailed quote, we guarantee the best nanodisc products and first-class services.

References:
I. G. Denisov and S. G. Sligar. (2016). Nanodiscs for structural and functional studies of membrane proteins. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology,23: 481–486.
P. Hörnschemeyer, et al. (2016). Interaction Analysis of a Two-Component System Using Nanodiscs. Plos ONE, 11(2): e0149187.
J. M. Dörr, et al. (2014). Detergent-free isolation, characterization, and functional reconstitution of a tetrameric K+ channel: The power of native nanodiscs. PNAS, 111(52): 18607–18612.

P. Bhattacharya, et al. (2010). Nanodisc-Incorporated Hemagglutinin Provides Protective Immunity against Influenza Virus Infection. Journal of Virology, 10: 361-371.