• Proceedings of the Korean Powder Metallurgy Institute Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.32-33
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• 2003

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.550-554
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• 2003

Current nanogold cluster synthesized by chemical routine with 11 or 55 atoms of gold has been widely used for immuno chemistry probe as a form of nanocluster conjugated with biomolecules. It would be an undeveloped region that the 1 nm size of nanogold could be made by materials engineering processing. Therefore, objective of this study is to minimize the size of gold nanocluster as a function of operating temperature and chamber pressure in inert gas condensation (IGC) processing. Evaporation temperature was controlled by input current from 50 A to 65 A. Chamber pressure was controlled by argon gas with a range of 0.05 to 2 torr. The gold nanocluster by IGC was evaluated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The gold nanocluster for TEM analysis was directly sampled with special in-situ method during the processing. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to observe 3-D nanogold layer surfaces on a slide glass for the following biomolecule conjugation step. The size of gold nanoclusters had a close relationship with the processing condition such as evaporation temperature and chamber pressure. The approximately 1 nm size of nanogold was obtained at the processing condition for 1 torr at $1124 ^{\circ}C$.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2011

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) constitute an important class of drug targets and are involved in every aspect of human physiology including sleep regulation, blood pressure, mood, food intake, perception of pain, control of cancer growth, and immune response. Radiometric assays have been the classic method used during the search for potential therapeutics acting at various GPCRs for most GPCR-based drug discovery research programs. An increasing number of diverse small molecules, together with novel GPCR targets identified from genomics efforts, necessitates the use of high-throughput assays with a good sensitivity and specificity. Currently, a wide array of high-throughput tools for research on GPCRs is available and can be used to study receptor-ligand interaction, receptor driven functional response, receptor-receptor interaction,and receptor internalization. Many of the assay technologies are based on luminescence or fluorescence and can be easily applied in cell based models to reduce gaps between in vitro and in vivo studies for drug discovery processes. Especially, cell based models for GPCR can be efficiently employed to deconvolute the integrated information concerning the ligand-receptor-function axis obtained from label-free detection technology. This review covers various platform technologies used for the research of GPCRs, concentrating on the principal, non-radiometric homogeneous assay technologies. As current technology is rapidly advancing, the combination of probe chemistry, optical instruments, and GPCR biology will provide us with many new technologies to apply in the future.