Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2010

Current Protein and Peptide Science (CPPS) has now completed ten years of publication. As we embark on the next ten years it is useful to look back over the past and reflect on our successes as well as our problems. I am very pleased that CPPS has featured high quality review articles from laboratories around the world. Interacting with authors from so many countries has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my job a Read More

Cooperative interactions within biological macromolecules are of fundamental physiological relevance and have been studied in great detail. Yet, even in the best investigated case of oxygen binding by hemoglobin, our understanding of the structural and thermodynamic bases of cooperativity is far from satisfactory. Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain cooperative O2 binding to hemoglobin, among which Read More

The intent of this article is to review recent literature on ribosome inactivating proteins (RIPs) including isolation and characterization of new RIPs, studies on the crystal structures and mechanisms of actions of RIPs, the use of saporin-based neurotoxins to selectively lesion cholinergic neurons in neuroscience research, and the use of RIP-based conjugates and immunotoxins in anticancer therapy.

Amyloid-β (Aβ) peptide is commonly found in human Alzheimer's disease (AD) brain and is the main component of Alzheimer amyloid plaques. The predominant forms of Aβ in the human brain are Aβ(1-40) and Aβ(1-42), but Aβ(25-35) fragment, physiologically present in elderly people, is the more toxic region and has been recently found to play a relevant role in AD, due to its peculiar aggregation properties. In this work, we r Read More

Lysosomal enzymes undergo phosphorylation on their mannose residues in the Golgi apparatus and are recognized by two distinct type I transmembrane glycoproteins designated as the mannose 6-phosphate receptors; MPR300, (Mr 300 kDa) and MPR46, (Mr 46 kDa) that internally transport them to the lysosomes. In humans, absence of this recognition system leads to severe lysosomal storage disease, emphasizin Read More

Random mutagenesis is a powerful tool for generating enzymes, proteins, entire metabolic pathways, or even entire genomes with desired or improved properties. This technology is used to evolve genes in vitro through an iterative process consisting of recombinant generation. Coupled with the development of powerful high-throughput screening or selection methods, this technique has been successfully used to solve pr Read More