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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter August 20, 2015

The macromolecular crowding effect – from in vitro into the cell

  • David Gnutt

    David Gnutt obtained a BSc in Biochemistry in 2011 and a MSc in Biochemistry in 2013 from the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Since 2013, he has been a PhD fellowship holder at the International Graduate School of Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany working in the group of Jun-Prof Dr. S. Ebbinghaus.

    and Simon Ebbinghaus

    Simon Ebbinghaus has been a Junior Professor at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Department of Physical Chemistry II) since 2011. Before that, he worked as a Feodor Lynen Research Fellow with Martin Gruebele at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) from 2008 to 2010. He received his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Ruhr-University Bochum in 2007 under the supervision of Martina Havenith. For more details, see www.rub.de/pc2/ebbinghaus.

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From the journal Biological Chemistry

Abstract

The influence of the cellular milieu, a complex and crowded solvent, is often neglected when biomolecular structure and function are studied in vitro. To mimic the cellular environment, crowding effects are commonly induced in vitro using artificial crowding agents like Ficoll or dextran. However, it is unclear if such effects are also observed in cellulo. Diverging results on protein stability in living cells point out the need for new quantitative methods to investigate the contributions of excluded volume and nonspecific interactions to the cellular crowding effect. We show how new crowding sensitive probes may be utilized to directly investigate crowding effects in living cells. Moreover, we discuss processes where crowding effects could play a crucial role in molecular cell biology.


Corresponding author: Simon Ebbinghaus, Department of Physical Chemistry II, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-44801 Bochum, Germany; and International Graduate School of Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, D-44801 Bochum, Germany, e-mail:

About the authors

David Gnutt

David Gnutt obtained a BSc in Biochemistry in 2011 and a MSc in Biochemistry in 2013 from the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Since 2013, he has been a PhD fellowship holder at the International Graduate School of Neuroscience, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany working in the group of Jun-Prof Dr. S. Ebbinghaus.

Simon Ebbinghaus

Simon Ebbinghaus has been a Junior Professor at the Ruhr-University Bochum (Department of Physical Chemistry II) since 2011. Before that, he worked as a Feodor Lynen Research Fellow with Martin Gruebele at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) from 2008 to 2010. He received his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Ruhr-University Bochum in 2007 under the supervision of Martina Havenith. For more details, see www.rub.de/pc2/ebbinghaus.

Acknowledgments

Funding from the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Rückkehrerprogramm) and the Cluster of Excellence RESOLV (EXC 1069) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) is acknowledged. D.G. is supported by the International Graduate School of Neuroscience (Ruhr-University Bochum,Germany). We thank M. Senske for the careful review of the manuscript.

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Received: 2015-4-17
Accepted: 2015-8-13
Published Online: 2015-8-20
Published in Print: 2016-1-1

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