Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 17, Issue 1, 2010

The region (101-112) of C1B domain in PKCγ plays a crucial role in the activation of the enzyme and subsequent gap junction inhibition. Substitution studies on peptides correlating to the C1B region show that a flexible structure and ability to be phosphorylated on serine 109 are critical for this purpose.

In the present study, we elucidated the effect of potassium salts on alkali denatured hen egg white lysozyme (EC 3.2.1.17) using intrinsic/extrinsic fluorescence as well circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopic methods. Intrinsic fluorescence studies revealed that various potassium salts mediate stabilization of lysozyme against alkali denaturation. Far and near UV CD spectrum studies, showed that 2M KCl induced appreciable am Read More

During the course of sepsis, heart and liver dysfunction occurs in 20-30 % of patients. Both septic cardiomyopathy and septic liver dysfunction have a high mortality and the underlying molecular pathophysiology remains unclear. The present study investigated changes in both cardiac and liver protein expression after cecal ligature and puncture (CLP) in a model of rat sepsis during a post-induction time course of 12, 24, and 48 Read More

With the rapid increase of protein sequences in the post-genomic age, the need for an automated and accurate tool to predict protein subcellular localization becomes increasingly important. Many efforts have been tried. Most of them aim to find the optimal classification scheme and less of them take the simplifying the complexity of biological system into consideration. This work shows how to decrease the complexity of biol Read More

An agglutinin with a molecular mass of 130 kDa has been isolated from the seeds of Alpinia zerumbet cv.‘Variegata’. The isolation procedure involved anion exchange chromatography on DEAE-cellulose, affinity chromatography on Affi-gel blue gel, and gel filtration by fast protein liquid chromatography on Superdex 75. The agglutinin exhibited hemagglutinating activity toward rabbit erythrocytes which could not be inhib Read More

The growth factor receptor-bound protein Src homology 2 (Grb2-SH2) plays an important role in the oncogenic Ras signaling pathway, which involves in cell proliferation and differentiation. Therefore, the antagonist of Grb2-SH2 has become a potential target for developing anticancer agents. Recently, we discovered the peptide 1 (Fmoc-Glu-Tyr-Aib- Asn-NH2) with high affinity for the Grb2-SH2 domain by using surface Read More

Proteases have been used not only for proteolysis but also in organic solvent-assisted religation processes. Here, we demonstrated the effect of salts on peptide bond resynthesis in Glutathione-S-transferase (GST) and have found it to be in the purview of the Hofmeister phenomena. Our results show that the efficiency and ease of religation increases with an increase in the surface charge densities of the cations used in th Read More

A series of elegant phosphorylation site prediction methods have been developed, which are playing an increasingly important role in accelerating the experimental characterization of phosphorylation sites in phosphoproteins. In this study, we selected six recently published methods (DISPHOS, NetPhosK, PPSP, KinasePhos, Scansite and PredPhospho) to evaluate their performance. First, we compiled three testing datasets contai Read More

RipA is an important growth factor of M. tuberculosis. Its depletion produces decreasing bacterial growth and abnormal phenotype. RipA C-terminal fragment (263-472), containing its predicted catalytic domain has been successfully crystallized using vapor-diffusion methods. The structure has been solved by Multiwavelength Anomalous Dispersion and atomic resolution refinement is in progress.

There is accumulating evidence that proteinuria is not merely a biomarker for the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD), but also a mediator of this devastating disorder. Indeed, albumin, one of the major components found in proteinuria, causes proinflammatory and profibrotic changes in cultured proximal tubular cells. Further, numerous studies have demonstrated the active participation of the renin-angiotensin system Read More

A new protease, named SsMTP was identified from the archeon Sulfolobus solfataricus. The enzyme is associated to the cell-membrane and over-produced in response to the peptide-enriched media. SsMTP has a molecular mass of 120 kDa showing optimal activity at pH 2.0 in the temperature range 70 - 90 °C, and a half-life of 20 days at 80 °C. Primary structure analysis revealed that SsMTP represents a novel typ Read More

Elucidation of the molecular mechanisms determining the formation of various tissues and organs is one of the central problems of cell biology. High-resolution NMR spectroscopy was applied for the analysis of the metabolites produced at the various areas of the apical part of the onion Allium cepa roots. To this end, three samples were extracted from the root apex (the root cap, the meristem region and the cell elongati Read More

Mechanical properties of (protein L)5 have been recently investigated by single-molecule force spectroscopy. It has been demonstrated that the unfolding of individual domains proceeds through a two-state mechanism. Here, we study mechanical properties of protein L at the atomic level under stretching at constant velocity using molecular dynamics simulations. We have found that the unfolding process of protein L can o Read More

Usually, wherever breast STAT5a is present, PRLR is reduced; without STAT5a PRLR becomes abundant. Five breast lesions essentially lacking both were tested immunohistochemically for PRLR isoforms. The intermediate isoform was essentially only detected in these lesions. In some breast lesions PRLR isoforms may be involved in JAK/STAT pathway disturbances.

A three-dimensional model of the malarial drug target protein PfDXR was generated, and validated using structure-checking programs and protein docking studies. Structural and functional features unique to PfDXR were identified using the model and comparative sequence analyses with apicomplexan and non-apicomplexan DXR proteins. Furthermore, we have used the model to develop an efficient approach to screen fo Read More

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) inhibit tumor growth and angiogenesis. Covalent linkage of naproxen to human serum albumin (HSA) has been shown to target it efficiently to the liver and this may potentially be exploited for liver-selective inhibition of angiogenesis. With the aim of investigating the anti-angiogenic efficiency of NSAID-HSA conjugates in vitro, three NSAIDs, aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen wer Read More

The lectin pathway provides an antibody independent route of complement activation. Mannan-binding lectin (MBL) can form compound with MBL-associated serine proteases (MASPs) through its collagen-like region (CLR) to initiate complement fixation. In this study, we designed and synthesized a range of peptides according to the sequence of CLR in human MBL, which were assumed to block the MBL-MASP interacti Read More

We propose a sequence-based multiple classifier system, i.e., rotation forest, to infer protein-protein interactions (PPIs). Moreover, Moran autocorrelation descriptor is used to code an interaction protein pair. Experimental results on Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Helicobacter pylori datasets show that our approach outperforms those previously published in literature, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the prop Read More