Current Protein and Peptide Science - Volume 5, Issue 4, 2004

Life on our planet has adapted to a wide range of physical conditions, including extremely high and low temperatures, high pressures, extremes of pH and chemically aggressive conditions. To cope with these stress factors, organisms have evolved a variety of strategies operating on very different levels, from the small molecule response to physiological and behavioural adaptation. The only kind of stress response that is f Read More

In spite of the relevance of the results obtained through the clinical application of chemotherapeutic agents (reverse transcriptase and proteinase inhibitors) that are able to prolong the life span of affected people, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) remains a serious and lethal disease. AIDS is caused by a type 1 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) and formation of a complex among the gp120, CD4 and CCR Read More

Understanding the interactions between activating or antagonizing ligands and their cognate receptors at a molecular level offers promise for the development of pharmacological therapeutics for CNS disorders. The discovery of novel molecules that are capable of discriminating between the varied molecular subunits or isoforms of ion channels should provide a more detailed understanding of the pathophysiology of many CN Read More

Modern protein secondary structure prediction methods are based on exploiting evolutionary information contained in multiple sequence alignments. Critical steps in the secondary structure prediction process are (i) the selection of a set of sequences that are homologous to a given query sequence, (ii) the choice of the multiple sequence alignment method, and (iii) the choice of the secondary structure prediction me Read More

The peptide hormone angiotensin II is well established to play an endocrine role in the regulation of blood pressure, fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. In addition to its hemodynamic function, recent studies have shown that numerous tissues and organs contain their own locally generated angiotensin products (angiotensin II, III, IV and Ang 1-7) and they exhibit their respective activities. Such an intrinsic angioten Read More

The fact that cleavage of single peptide linkages in proteins often leads to extensive conformational alteration, including regions far removed from the cleavage site is not fully understood. We propose, based on the work of Linderstrom-Lang and Schellman, that disruption primarily occurs within protein structural domains that are stabilized by cooperative interactions and that cleavage of single peptide linkages of the domain per Read More

Most proteins function as multiprotein complexes or interact with multiprotein complexes. Identification of protein-protein interactions in the context of their physiologically relevant complexes is therefore key to fully understand the cellular machinery. Here I discuss advances in chemical crosslinking methods that allow investigators to map direct subunit contacts in transient interactions with multimeric complexes. Method Read More