Abgent is a global

biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

company based in

San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

, US with offices in Maidenhead, UK and

Suzhou, China Suzhou is a major prefecture-level city in southern Jiangsu province, China. As part of the Yangtze Delta megalopolis, it is a major economic center and focal point of trade and commerce. Founded in 514 BC, Suzhou rapidly grew in size by the ...

and distributors around the world. Abgent develops

antibodies An antibody (Ab) or immunoglobulin (Ig) is a large, Y-shaped protein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily which is used by the immune system to identify and neutralize antigens such as bacteria and viruses, including those that caus ...

and related agents to study proteins involved in cellular function and disease. Abgent's

target key areas of research including

autophagy Autophagy (or autophagocytosis; from the Greek language, Greek , , meaning "self-devouring" and , , meaning "hollow") is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-depe ...

neuroscience Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions, and its disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, ...

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

stem cells In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can change into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type of cell ...

and more. Abgent was acquired in 2011 by

WuXi AppTec WuXi AppTec (WuXi is pronounced as ''Wu-shee'') is a global pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and medical device company. History WuXi PharmaTech was founded in December 2000 in Shanghai by organic chemist Ge Li. The company opened chemistry ...

, a global pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and medical device outsourcing company with operations in China and the United States.

Peer review

Abgent was listed as a selected supplier in ''

Nature Magazine ''Nature'' is a British weekly scientific journal founded and based in London, England. As a multidisciplinary publication, ''Nature'' features Peer review, peer-reviewed research from a variety of academic disciplines, mainly in science and t ...

'', ''Antibody Technology'', ''Drug Discovery Features'' and ''The Scientist's'' cell signaling feature. More than 1,100 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals have cited Abgent antibody, protein, and peptide products and custom services.

Core business

As one of the world's largest manufacturers of antibodies for biological research and drug discovery, Abgent develops, produces, and sells antibodies for use in academic, biotechnological, and pharmaceutical industries. Core products are complemented by custom antibody services and custom protein services for drug discovery targets.

Tools

SUMOplot Analysis Program

''SUMOplot'' is a tool used to predict sumoylation sites, an important post-translational modification of proteins. SUMO-modified proteins contain the tetrapeptide motif B-K-x-D/E where B is a

hydrophobic In chemistry, hydrophobicity is the chemical property of a molecule (called a hydrophobe) that is seemingly repelled from a mass of water. In contrast, hydrophiles are attracted to water. Hydrophobic molecules tend to be nonpolar and, thu ...

residue, K is the

lysine Lysine (symbol Lys or K) is an α-amino acid that is a precursor to many proteins. Lysine contains an α-amino group (which is in the protonated form when the lysine is dissolved in water at physiological pH), an α-carboxylic acid group ( ...

conjugated to SUMO, x is any amino acid (aa), D or E is an acidic residue.

Substrate Substrate may refer to: Physical layers *Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached ** Substrate (aquatic environment), the earthy material that exi ...

specificity appears to be derived directly from Ubc9 and the respective substrate motif. SUMOplot predicts the probability for the SUMO consensus sequence (SUMO-CS) to be engaged in SUMO attachment. The SUMOplot score system is based on two criteria: first, direct amino acid match to the SUMO-CS observed and shown to bind Ubc9, and second, substitution of the consensus

amino acid Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 a ...

residues with amino acid residues exhibiting similar

hydrophobicity In chemistry, hydrophobicity is the chemical property of a molecule (called a hydrophobe) that is seemingly intermolecular force, repelled from a mass of water. In contrast, hydrophiles are attracted to water. Hydrophobic molecules tend to b ...

. SUMOplot has been used in the past to predict Ubc9 dependent sites.

Autophagy Receptor Motif Plotter

The

pathway is mediated by selective receptors. They recognize and sort diverse cargo substrates (e.g., proteins, organelles, pathogens) for delivery to the autophagic machinery. Known autophagy receptors are characterized by short linear sequence motifs (autophagy receptor motifs, or ARMs) responsible for the interaction with the Atg8/LC3 family. Many ARM-containing proteins (ARM-CPs) are also involved in autophagosome formation and maturation and a few of them in regulating signaling pathways. ''Autophagy Receptor Motif Plotter'' assists in the identification of novel ARM-CPs. Users input a given an amino acid sequence into the web-enabled tool, and the program identifies internal sequences matching a pattern within the 3 classes of the extended ARM motif (x6-W/F/Yxxx-x2). The program then computes and lists the top four scores for each motif class (W-, F-, Y-). The full sequence of the ARM-CP is displayed, where ARMs are colored by their score and ranked score-values are presented in tabular form.Rogov et al (2014) Molecular Cell 53: 167-78

References

External links

Abgent Official Website
* {{NCBI-scienceprimer Biotechnology companies of the United States Companies based in San Diego Biotechnology companies established in 2001 2001 establishments in California Biotechnology companies disestablished in 2010 2010 disestablishments in California