Sligar Lab	Stephen G. Sligar I.C. Gunsalus Professor Dept of Biochemistry Dept of Chemistry College of Medicine Center for Biophysics and Computational Biology Director, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Nanodisc Technology

Soluble Lipid Bilayer Systems for Structural and Functional Studies of Membrane Proteins

We remain committed to the widest possible dissemination of the Nanodisc technology, including materials, methods and latest data from our laboratory and hope that more and more users will find these self-assembled systems useful for their work.

Overview of Methodology
Nanodisc Protein / DNA Sequences [download a PDF version]
Nanodisc Assembly Protocols [download a PDF version]

We are happy to provide samples of purified membrane scaffold proteins for all researchers. Prior to shipment of protein materials, the University of Illinois Office of Technology Management (OTM) requires the execution of a Materials Transfer Agreement (MTA). A pdf of the this application can be had by clicking MTA. The Technology Manager assigned to our laboratory is:

Eric Payne
Technology Manager
Office of Technology Management
University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign
319 Ceramics Building MC-243
105 S. Goodwin Avenue
Urbana, IL 61801-2901

Ph. (217) 265-6212
Fax (217) 265-5530
Emil: ecpayne@uiuc.edu

After completion of the MTA request form, send this directly to Mr. Payne who will coordinate execution with your institution. He will then notify us when we can ship the material. You can follow the paperwork by contacting Eric Payne or the Office of Technology Management directly. Intellectual property and materials transfer is handled at the University rather than Campus level through the Vice President for Technology and Economic Development (Avijit Ghosh hosha@uillinois.edu), the Director of the OTM (Lesley Millar millar@uiuc.edu), the Associate Director of Technology Management (Delphine Kranz delkranz@uiuc.edu) and Mr. Payne.

To expedite the process, indicate on the completed MTA form the amounts of MSP you need for the experiments. A set of sequences, protocols and methods are available to help you decide which MSP would be best for your application. We currently have large quantities of MSP1D1 (formally called MSP1T2) and MSP1E3D1, which are the scaffolds for the smaller and larger discs and what we routinely use in our laboratory. The relevant sequences and protocols are available.

The Office of Technology Management currently does not allow us to ship out the clones for the membrane scaffold proteins, although the DNA and protein sequences for all constructs have been published and are available on this site. We continue to advocate for the ability to supply MSP clones to a commercial archiving site for general use. Although we were among the first to express synthetic genes in E. coli (early 1980s) the technology is now routine and we often use the gene synthesis service provided by Integrated DNA Technologies.

If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me, our senior technical person for MSP production and Nanodisc assembly (Yelena Grinkova grinkova@uiuc.edu) or my laboratory manager (Aretta Weber aeweber@uiuc.edu).

Steve Sligar

Last updated: 7/16/08