Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 18, Issue 7, 2011

β-1,3-glucanases are found in organisms as diverse as plants, animals, bacteria and fungi. In plants, such enzymes are not only associated with defense mechanisms against pathogens, but also play critical roles in physiological and developmental processes. Here we identified a new β-1,3-glucanase in maize seeds, and named it ZmGlucA. Sequence analysis revealed that ZmGlucA belongs to the class A of β-1,3-glucanase, Read More

Glutamine (GLN), which is the most abundant free amino acid of the human body, is an important cellular fuel and an essential precursor for the antioxidant glutathione (GSH). GLN plays a regulatory role in several cell specific processes, such as metabolism, protein synthesis and degradation, and respiratory burst. Severe GLN deficiencies usually occur rapidly in critical illness. GLN has regulatory capacity in immune and cell m Read More

Hydantoinases are industrial enzymes with varying degree of activities on variable substrates to form different products. Although, few of the hydantoinase structures were known recently, the functional details and active site mechanism were not clearly understood yet. In a structure determination effort we reported that Bacillus sp. AR9 hydantoinase contains uncarboxylated lysine in the active site, whereas all the ot Read More

On the basis of Bayesian probabilistic inference, Gaussian process (GP) is a powerful machine learning method for nonlinear classification and regression, but has only very limited applications in the new areas of computational vaccinology and immunoinformatics. In the current work, we present a paradigmatic study of using GP regression technique to quantitatively model and predict the binding affinities of over 7000 im Read More

Mono-, di- and trisaccharide representing the reducing terminal of the core structure of N-glycans were incorporated into Leu-Lys-Asn-Gly-Gly-Pro hexapeptide that is a partial structure of the Trp-cage mini-protein by linear assembly. These studies provide evidence that the used combination of Fmoc and Boc strategy and mild conditions result in glycopeptides in high purity and reasonable yield.

Prediction of thermophilic and mesophilic protein plays a crucial role in both biochemistry and bioengineering. In this study, a different mode of pseudo amino acid composition (PseAAC) was proposed to formulate the protein samples by integrating the amino acid composition, the physic chemical features, as well as the composition transition and distribution features, where each of the protein samples was represented b Read More

The human leukemia inhibitory factor (hLIF) is one of the most important cytokines in the interleukin-6 (IL-6) cytokine family. Numerous studies have demonstrated that hLIF is a pleiotropic cytokine with multiple effects on different types of cells and tissues. The optimal chemical synthesis of the hLIF gene has been previously reported to increase the expression of the recombinant inclusion body protein in E. coli. However, the Read More

Recombinant antihypertensive peptide multimer (AHPM-2, 8kDa/68AA), a new designed polypeptide with potential antihypertensive effect in vivo, is composed of 15 low-molecular-weight antihypertensive peptides tandemly linked up according to the restriction sites of gastrointestinal proteases. After gene optimization, the DNA fragment encoding AHPM-2 was chemically synthesized, cloned into the pET32a, and successfully expr Read More

Discriminating thermophilic lipases from their similar thermostable counterparts is a challenging task and it would help to design stable proteins. In this study, the distributions of N (N=2, 3) neighboring amino acids and the nonadjacent di-residue coupling patterns in the sequences of 65 thermostable and 77 thermophilic lipases had been systematically analyzed. It was found that the hydrophobic residues Leu, Pro, Met, P Read More

The protein translocations across mitochondrial membranes are carried out by specialized complexes, the Translocase of Outer Membrane (TOM) and Translocase of Inner Membrane (TIM). TIM23 translocon is responsible for translocating the mitochondrial matrix proteins across the mitochondrial inner membrane. Tim44 is an essential, peripheral membrane protein in TIM23 complex. Tim44 is tightly associated with t Read More

Superoxide dismutase (SOD, EC 1.15.1.1) plays an important antioxidant defense role in organisms exposed to oxygen. Copper- and zinc-containing SOD (Cu/Zn-SOD) catalysis and the change in folding behavior of this enzyme in response to inactivators are therefore of interest. We studied the inhibitory effects of trifluoroethanol (TFE) on the activity and conformation of a Cu/Zn-SOD from Bos taurus. We found that TFE inactivat Read More

Human heat shock protein 60 (hHSP60) and apolipoprotein B-100 (ApoB-100) in oxidized low density lipoproteins are considered pro-atherosclerotic factors by inducing autoimmunity response, and immunization with peptides from these two proteins can inhibit atherosclerosis in animal models. In this study, we constructed chimeric proteins containing ApoB-100 and/or hHSP60 peptides by human intestinal trefoil factor (ITF) as a Read More

We investigated the delivery of calcium-alginate encapsulated peptidase (Flavourzyme®, Aspergillus oryzae) on proteolysis of Cheddar cheese. Physical and chemical characteristics such as moisture, pH and fat content were measured, and no differences were found between control and experimental cheese at day 0. SDS-PAGE analysis clearly showed that proteolysis of α and k casein was significantly accelerated after th Read More

Cyclotides are macrocyclic knotted peptides originating from plants. They are extremely stable and have a range of bioactivities including anti-HIV and insecticidal activity. Given the stability of the cyclotide framework, there is interest in using these peptides as scaffolds in drug design. In the current study, we have shown that nano-LC Fourier transform mass spectrometry (FTMS) is an effective method of analyzing cyclotides i Read More