Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 19, Issue 12, 2012

In this work the efficient and simple method of improvement specificity and solubility of low molecular weight proteinase substrates is described. The series of fluorescent substrates of selected proteolytic enzymes (neutrophil elastase, cathepsin G and proteinase 3 along with human airway trypsin like protease) were synthesized and modified by selective pegylation by the attachment of 2-(2-(2-aminoethoxy)ethoxy)acetic aci Read More

A new synthetic pathway is described to prepare asymmetrically protected 2,7-diaminosuberic acid. This strategy exploits (acyloxy)alkoxy promoiety as protecting group and RCM reaction using second generation Grubbs catalyst and provides the trans isomer of (2R,7R)-7-(((9H-fluoren-9-yl)methoxy)carbonylamino)-2-(tert-butoxycarbonylamino)-8- methoxy-8-oxooct-4-enoic acid, which was in turn reduced to obtain (2R, Read More

How to correctly and efficiently map small molecule to its possible metabolic pathway is a meaningful topic to metabonomics research. In this work, a novel approach to address this problem was introduced to encode physicochemical properties of small molecules. Based on this encoding method, a two stage feature selection method called mRMR-FFSAdaBoost was adopted to map small molecules to their corresponding Read More

Based on the structure of Octreotide (SMS 201-995) some modified at positions 5 with Dap (diaminopropanoic acid), Dab (diaminobutanoic acid) and Orn new C-amide analogs were synthesized. The Thr6 was replaced by unnatural amino acids Tle (t-leucine). The cytotoxic effects of the novel compounds were tested in vitro against a panel of human tumor cell lines. All investigated compounds exhibited different concentration- Read More

ClpX is a general stress protein which belongs to the heat shock protein, Clp/Hsp100 family of molecular chaperones. ClpX, in association with ClpP degrades proteins in an ATP dependent manner. Some members of the Clp family have been shown to be involved in the pathogenesis of many bacteria. The Helicobacter pylori genome demonstrates the presence of ClpX along with ClpA, ClpB and ClpP, the other members of the Read More

Colon cancer is one of the most common malignances. In vitro and in vivo study show that retinoic acids inhibit a wide variety of cancer cells but the molecular mechanism of their anti-tumor effects are not yet fully understood. Alltrans retinoic acid (ATRA), an isomer of retinoic acid, can inhibit the proliferation of HCT-15 human colon cancer cell line. A proteomic analysis was performed using HCT-15 treated with ATRA to f Read More

Cysteine peptidases are the best characterized peptidases among those involved with storage protein mobilization during seed germination. In the present work we show two major groups of cysteine peptidase activities, one of higher (55 to 97 kDa) and other with lower (15 to 20 kDa) molecular masses which are temporally activated after 24 and 48 HAI, respectively, in germinating cowpeas. The former group is found Read More

A novel antifungal peptide with 36 amino acids was identified by functional screening of a marine metagenomic library. The peptide did not show similarity with any existing antimicrobial peptide sequences in the databank. The108 bp ORF designated as mmgp1 was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) using pET expression system. Mass spectrometry analysis of the purified recombinant peptide revealed a m Read More

Relative importance of the intrinsic properties of the polypeptide chain vis-a-vis the environmental influences, in driving the folding of a protein, has been a subject of extensive debate and investigation. Folding/misfolding lead to self association in many systems, which have biological functional significance. We compare here, the NMR derived equilibrium folding transitions driven under different environmental conditions in the G Read More

Bcl-xL protein belongs to BCL-2 family which has either pro- or anti-apoptotic activities owing to their importance in the regulation of apoptosis, tumor genesis and cellular responses to anti-cancer therapy. Bcl-xL permeabilize the outer mitochondrial membrane of cells and inhibit these processes. Protein–inhibitor interactions play an important role in regulating the expression of Bcl-xL protein. Here, we report the dockin Read More

Defensins are considered to play an important role in the innate immune system of virtually all life forms, from insects and plants to amphibians and mammals. They are classified into alpha, beta and theta-defensins. Fast and accurate computational prediction of defensin and defensin types will help in annotating unidentified defensin novel peptides. Identified defensins, owing to their small length and potent antimicrobial acti Read More

Previously we constructed a fusion protein based on GLP-1 and globular adiponectin but unfortunately its yield was low because it was mainly expressed as inclusion bodies. Herein to optimize the soluble expression of this fusion protein we tried several fusion tag systems. Fusion tags, including GST-, Trx- and MBP-tag, greatly improved the soluble expression of the fusion protein. However, these tag-fusion proteins were Read More

Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is an antioxidant, antiapoptotic and cytoprotective enzyme, catalysing the degradation of heme to carbon monoxide, biliverdin and ferrous iron. Recent studies indicated that expression of HO-1 is under the control of proapoptotic transcription factor p53 and antioxidant transcription factor Nrf2. Whether each of these transcription factors act independently or there is a cooperation between t Read More

The cornea is physiologically avascular. Following a corneal injury, wound healing often proceeds without neovascularization (NV); however, corneal NV may be induced during wound healing in certain inflammatory, infectious, degenerative, and traumatic states. Such states disrupt the physiologic balance between pro-angiogenic and antiangiogenic mediators, favoring angiogenesis. Contributors to such states are matri Read More