Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 10, Issue 6, 2009

Protein phosphorylation is a common signaling mechanism in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. Whilst serine, threonine and tyrosine phosphorylation dominate much of the literature there are several other amino acids that are phosphorylated in a variety of organisms. Two of these phosphoamino acids are phosphoarginine and phospholysine. This review will focus on the chemistry and biochemistry of both ph Read More

The platelet glycoprotein receptor regulates the adhesion of blood platelets to damaged blood vessel walls and the subsequent platelet aggregation. One of the subunits, platelet glycoprotein Ibα (GpIbα), binds thrombin, a serine protease with both procoagulant and anticoagulant activities. Two groups reported the crystal structures of the complex between thrombin and the N-terminal extracellular domain (leucine Read More

The concept of Receptor Mosaic (RM) is discussed; hence the integrative functions of the assemblage of Gprotein coupled receptors physically interacting in the plane of the plasma membrane. The main focus is on a heterotrimer of G-protein coupled receptors, namely the A2A-D2-CB1 receptor trimer. A bioinformatics analysis was carried out on the amino acid sequence of these receptors to indicate domains possibly in Read More

The Mastermind-like (MAML) proteins are transcriptional coactivators for Notch signaling, an evolutionarily conserved pathway that plays several key roles in development and in human disease. The MAML family contains MAML1, MAML2, and MAML3. More recently, MAML1 has been shown to function as a coactivator for the tumor suppressor p53, the MADS box transcription enhancer factor (MEF) 2C, and β-catenin. In addition Read More

Class-I cytokines represent a large group of molecules involved in different physiological processes including host defence, immune regulation, food intake, energy metabolism and, relevant for this review, reproduction. In this latter respect, here, we focus the attention on four of these molecules, specifically leptin, ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) and interleukin-6 (IL-6). These cytokines Read More

Anionic antimicrobial peptides / proteins (AAMPs) were first reported in the early 1980s and since then, have been established as an important part of the innate immune systems of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants. These peptides are active against bacteria, fungi, viruses and pests such as insects. AAMPs may be induced or expressed constitutively and in some cases, antimicrobial activity appears to be a secondary role for Read More

Conformational flexibility is an inherent property of the protein structure. Large scale changes in the protein conformation play a key role in a variety of fundamental biological activities and have been implicated in a number of diseases. The time scales of functionally relevant dynamic processes in proteins generally do not allow the researchers to study them by the means of detailed atomic level simulations. Therefore Read More

There has been a tremendous increase in the number of approved drugs derived from recombinant proteins; however, their development as potential drugs has been hampered by their instability that causes difficulty to formulate them as therapeutic agents. It has been shown that the reactivity of thiol and disulfide functional groups could catalyze chemical (i.e., oxidation and beta-elimination reactions) and physical (i.e. Read More