Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 19, Issue 9, 2012

Phase I metabolism is an important consideration in drug discovery because it profoundly affects the toxicity and activity profile of a drug candidate. In these metabolic processes, CYP450 family is responsible for the majority of biotransformation events. However, it is still an important challenge to predict sites of metabolism (SOM) of a new chemical entity due to the complex reaction mechanism and variety in CYP450 Read More

In systems biology, regulatory pathway is one of the most important research areas. However, regulatory pathway is so complicated that we still poorly understand this system. On the other hand, with rapid accumulated information on different organisms, it becomes more and more possible to in-depth investigate regulatory pathway. To understand regulatory pathway well, figuring out the components of each pathway is the Read More

It is important to understand the cause of amyloid illnesses by predicting the short protein fragments capable of forming amyloid-like fibril motifs aiding in the discovery of sequence-targeted anti-aggregation drugs. It is extremely desirable to design computational tools to provide affordable in silico predictions owing to the limitations of molecular techniques for their identification. In this research article, we tried to study, from Read More

C-terminal domain of peptidoglycan hydrolase enterolysin A (EnlA) is involved in specific recognition and binding to the target cell envelopes and represents true cell wall binding (CWB) domain. Sensitivity/resistance to EnlA is dependent on binding ability/disability of its CWB domain. We assume that main mechanism of resistance against EnlA is absence of the specific receptor on the cell surface, which is necessary for bi Read More

The effect of additional amino acid residue(s) fused to the N- and/or C-terminal on properties of the heterogeneously expressed protein is usually difficult to be predicted. Recombinant proteins expressed without any fused sequence should be the most desired materials for related studies, such as protein drug preparation, biochemistry investigations. Here, we report a very simple and universal method enabling the expressi Read More

Saturation Transfer Difference NMR (STD NMR) is used for the detection of the binding constant of the decapeptide RRRDDDSDDD with CK2α, the catalytic subunit of the proteinkinase CK2. For this work a valid irradiation frequency of the CK2α had to be found ensuring that no peptide resonance is affected by the irradiation. This is the principle problem for investigations of protein peptide interactions by STD NMR due t Read More

Obtaining soluble proteins in sufficient concentrations is a major obstacle in various experimental studies. How to predict the propensity of targets in large-scale proteomics projects to be soluble is a significant but not fairly resolved scientific problem. Chaos game representation (CGR) can investigate the patterns hiding in protein sequences, and can visually reveal previously unknown structure. Fractal dimensions are good Read More

Both fluorescence spectroscopic and molecular docking methods were used to investigate the interaction between bovine serum albumin (BSA) and a known Bcl-xl/Bcl-2 inhibitor HA 14-1. Based on the spectral overlap between the emission of BSA and absorption of HA 14-1, Forster energy transfer was proposed to be the possible quenching mechanism. The Stern-Volmer constants are 2.49 x 104, 2.04x 104 and 0.90 x 104 Read More

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a major cause of cancer related death. The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathway is over expressed in HNSCC. EGFR regulates the HNSCC by inducing signalling events responsible for regulating key tumorigenic processes such as proliferation, inhibition of apoptosis, cell adhesion/ motility, growth and survival. Present study evaluates the potential of N-(3-Ethynylphe Read More

Corneal angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis are induced by vascular endothelial growth factors (VEGFs) signaling through its receptors VEGFR-1, -2, and -3. Endostatin is a peptide antagonist of these receptors that causes inhibition of bFGF-induced corneal angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis. Here we show that binding of VEGF-C and endostatin to recombinant VEGFR-3 is competitive. Alignments of the pri Read More

Marine algae can serve as sources of bioactive compounds and currently have been shown their potential biological and pharmaceutical applications. Marine algae lectins have been shown to be effective at controlling inflammatory processes. This work aimed to analyze the immunostimulatory properties of lectins from the marine algae Solieria filiformis (SfL), Pterocladiella capillacea (PcL) and Caulerpa cupr Read More

Amyloidosis resulting from the deposition of aggregated protein has been linked to many debilitating degenerative diseases which include most notably Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The tendency for a protein to alternatively form highly ordered amyloid fibrils is dependent on many biological factors. Mutations, temperature, concentration, translational motion and pH play a pivotal role in inducing fibril aggregate assembly in vi Read More

The hydrophobic core in Bcl-xL composed of Trp137, Ile140, Trp181, Ile182, Trp188 and Phe191 is highly conserved and essential for protein folding, protein stability and binding affinity with BH3-peptide. 9 mutants of Ile140 residue were constructed and characterized in order to get better understanding of the effect of the hydrophobic core. Binding assay demonstrated that binding affinities between 4 charged muta Read More

Nucleobindin-2 is a 420 amino acid EF-hand Ca2+ binding protein that can be further processed to generate an 82 amino terminal peptide termed Nesfatin-1. To examine the function of secreted Nucleobindin-2 in adipocyte differentiation, cultured 3T3-L1 cells were incubated with either 0 or 100 nM of GST, GST-Nucleobindin-2, prior to and during the initiation of adipocyte differentiation. Nucleobindin-2 treatment decreased n Read More

Numerous proteins have been secreted in P. pastoris by fusing the target gene with α-factor pre-pro sequence at Kex2 endopeptidase cleavage site. However, in some instances the product cannot be correctly processed due to aberrant cleavage by Kex2 endopeptidase such as aprotinin. In this study, an aprotinin gene was cloned into pPIC9K at the signal peptidase cleavage site through a single NheI restriction site designed Read More

As per Bentham Science’s policy, the following article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief and its Authors published in ‘Protein & Peptide Letters“ due to their use of text obtained from another paper published in the Biochemical Journal......