Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 18, Issue 11, 2017

Fungal pathogens affect a wide variety of hosts, such as human beings, plants, animals, and insects. The course of infection relies on the virulence grade of the fungus and the strength of the defense mechanisms of the host. Virulence factors are closely related to the cell surface; cell wall proteins have a crucial role in adhesion, hyphal development, hydrophobicity, biofilm formation, immunomodulation and surface variati Read More

Paracoccidioides brasiliensis and P. lutzii cause human paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM). They are dimorphic ascomycetes that grow as filaments at mild temperatures up to 28°C and as multibudding pathogenic yeast cells at 37°C. Components of the fungal cell wall have an important role in the interaction with the host because they compose the cell outermost layer. The Paracoccidioides cell wall is composed mainly of polysacch Read More

Protein glycosylation is a widely distributed posttranslational modification, though not exclusive to eukaryotic cells. The addition of glycans to proteins plays crucial roles in protein folding and secretion, cell-cell interaction, functional specificity and structural properties of both secreted and membrane-bound proteins. In this review, we emphasize the N-linked glycosylation pathway found in eukaryotic cells, the contribution of Read More

Objective: The aim of this review is to examine the multiple activities of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in vertebrates. Content: The largest AMP families are the cathelicidins and defensins, but several peptides derived from bigger proteins have also been reported. Cathelicidins are characterized by a conserved Nterminal pro-region and a variable region that encodes the C-terminal mature peptide. The β-defensins Read More

Predicting functions of proteins is a key issue in the post-genomic era. Some experimental methods have been designed to predict protein functions. However, these methods cannot accommodate the vast amount of sequence data due to their inherent difficulty and expense. To address these problems, a lot of computational methods have been proposed to predict the function of proteins. In this paper, we provi Read More

Natural heme proteins may have heme bound to poly-peptide chain as a cofactor via noncovalent forces or heme as a prosthetic group may be covalently bound to the proteins. Nature has used porphyrins in diverse functions like electron transfer, oxidation, reduction, ligand binding, photosynthesis, signaling, etc. by modulating its properties through diverse protein matrices. Synthetic chemists have tried to utilize thes Read More

Vaccine development is one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine. Vaccines made of live-attenuated pathogens can revert to virulent live strains, which causes safety concerns. On the other hand, the use of purified antigenic components as subunit vaccines is safer, but less effective, as these components induce lower levels of protective immunity. Multiple copy presentation of an antigenic determinant in a w Read More

Striatal-enriched tyrosine protein phosphatase (STEP) is expressed mainly in the brain. Its dysregulation is associated with Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases, schizophrenia, fragile X syndrome, drug abuse and stroke/ischemia. However, an association between STEP and depressive disorders is still obscure. The review discusses the theoretical foundations and experimental facts concerning possible relationship betw Read More

Molecular dynamics (MD) is a computational technique which is used to study biomolecules in virtual environment. Each of the constituent atoms represents a particle and hence the biomolecule embodies a multi-particle mechanical system analyzed within a simulation box during MD analysis. The potential energies of the atoms are explained by a mathematical expression consisting of different forces and space parameters. T Read More