The actin cytoskeleton forms a membrane-associated network whose proper regulation is essential for numerous processes, including cell differentiation, proliferation, adhesion, chemotaxis, endocytosis, exocytosis, and multicellular development. In this report, we show that in Dictyostelium discoideum, paxillin (PaxB) and phospholipase D (PldB) colocalize and coimmunoprecipitate, suggesting that they interact physically. Additionally, the phenotypes observed during development, cell sorting, and several actin-required processes, including cyclic AMP (cAMP) chemotaxis, cell-substrate adhesion, actin polymerization, phagocytosis, and exocytosis, reveal a genetic interaction between paxB and pldB, suggesting a functional interaction between their gene products. Taken together, our data point to PldB being a required binding partner of PaxB during processes involving actin reorganization.

The pharmaceutical industry is increasingly faced with challenging separations of complex crude reaction mixtures at the microscale that require the adoption of new platforms for rapid target isolation, impurity determination, and quantitation. In this study, we describe an online microscale one-or two-dimensional liquid chromatography (1D/2D-LC) system with heart-cutting and multi (triple) detector triggering in either dimension to address this need. The advantages of charged aerosol detection (CAD) are discussed for the direct quantitation of limited quantity samples, without utilizing a second analytical instrument or gradient compensation pump. In addition to the significant time and cost savings, there is no minimum recovery requirement that exists when compared to gravimetric methods for accurate microscale quantitation. This platform has been successfully used to purify 0.5−5.0 mg scale reactions in 96-or 384-well reaction plates with a gradient time of 4 min per sample. Separations performed in both dimensions are complete in less than 12 min, including trapping and column equilibration time. The isolated arrays of small-quantity investigational compounds at a high purity enable rapid exploration of chemical reaction parameters and synthetic route scouting for biological target validation.

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We report the development of a dual-mode mass-directed supercritical fluid chromatography and reversed-phase liquid chromatography purification system. The addition of a third pump allows for flexible mobile phase control between the two techniques, and enables operation of either chromatography mode within minutes by activation of a set of switching valves on a single system. Software control, fluidic pathways, interface to the mass spectrometer, and fraction collection have been modified for compatibility between both separation methods. The conditioning solvent and tuning parameters for the mass spectrometer were adjusted to achieve an ideal signal trace in either mode with good linearity (r(2) > 0.970) over a range of concentrations and minimal noise for accurate peak detection and isolation. The registration success rate is 90% and overall sample recovery for either technique is 80-90%. Combining two orthogonal separation and purification modes in one single system has improved the purification throughput of complex mixtures and has been a valuable, cost-saving tool in our laboratory.