Reaction phenotyping appropriate

The FDA-approved and acceptable chemical inhibitors for reaction phenotyping are included in Table 2. Many of the inhibitors listed in Table 2 are metabolism-dependent inhibitors that, in order to inhibit CYP, require preincubation with NADPH-fortified human liver microsomes for 15 minutes or more. In the absence of the metabolism-dependent inhibitor, this preincubation of microsomes with NADPH can result in the partial, spontaneous loss of several CYP enzyme activities (see sec. II.C.7.c). Furthermore, the organic solvents commonly used to dissolve chemical inhibitors can themselves inhibit (or possibly activate) certain CYP enzymes, as discussed in section II.C.4. Therefore, appropriate solvent and preincubation controls should be included in all chemical inhibition experiments. 

In ribosome display, the physical link between genotype and phenotype is accomplished by mRNA-ribosome—protein complexes, which are directly used for selection. If a library of different mRNA molecules is translated, a protein library results in which each protein is produced from its own mRNA and remains connected to it. Since these complexes of the proteins and their encoding mRNAs are stable for several days under the appropriate conditions, very stringent selections can be performed. As all steps of ribosome display are carried out in vitro, reaction conditions of the individual steps can be tailored to the requirements of the protein species investigated, as well as the objectives of the selection or evolution experiment. Application of ribosome display has produced scFv fragments of antibodies with affinities in the picomolar range from libraries prepared from immunized mice (Hanes et al., 1998) and more recently from a naive, completely synthetic library (Hanes et al., 2000), and has been used to evolve improved off-rates and stability (Jermutus et al., 2000). 

The stability of a genetic modification may be analysed at the phenotypic and/or the genotypic level. The stability of phenotypic expression may be determined by trait characterisation or by analysis of sufficient samples, where appropriate, of RNA or protein expression. Some phenotypic traits e.g. resistances) may be quantified under testing conditions with the intact plant. As with other plant genes, expression of inserted DNA will be influenced by the environment. This should be taken into account during a phenotypic consideration of stability. Changes in patterns of expression or expression levels can be quantified in a biochemical reaction mediated by an expressed enzyme or by detection of the expressed protein with specific antibodies e.g. enzyme-Unked immunosorbent assay [ELISA], western blot analysis). 

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