Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 21, Issue 5, 2014

Up-Regulated Gene 7 (URG7) is a host gene up-regulated in HBV infected hepatocytes that has been suggested to have an anti-apoptotic activity mediated by caspases 3 and 8 and an endoplasmic reticulum localization. Here we report the structural characterization of the encoded protein URG7 by circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy in different solvent media: phosphate buffer and two membrane-mimetic sol Read More

Tyrosine kinase inhibitors show great promise as clinical therapies, but small molecule inhibitors that are available in the clinic and under development bind to the adenosine triphosphate binding domain of the kinase, potentially limiting efficacy and selectivity. The development of antisense peptide inhibitors is a relatively unexplored area of research, and here we investigate inhibitory peptides specific for the Janus Read More

AB204 is an Activin/BMP2 chimera, which has been found to exhibit a higher activity than Bone Morphogenetic Protein 2 (BMP2) in osteogenic activity. To prepare AB204 for its preclinical studies, AB204 has been characterized in various formulation buffers. We observed that AB204 purified by ion-exchange chromatography has low water solubility (2.0 mg/ml), whereas it has high water solubility (higher than 10.0 mg/ml) whe Read More

Therapeutic potential of human acidic fibroblast growth factor (FGF1) resulting from its undeniable role in angiogenesis and wound healing processes is questioned due to its low stability and short half-life in vivo. Our previous studies showed that prolonged biological activity of FGF1 can be achieved by increasing its proteolytic resistance directly linked to improved global thermostability. In this study, we applied an alterna Read More

In mammalian cells, responses to hypoxia at the molecular transduction level are hallmarks of adaptation and survival under oxygen deprivation conditions. In this study, the protein expression patterns of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are investigated under hypoxia in primary cortical neurons and in a model of organotypic hippocampal slices in neonatal Sprague-Dawley rats. Abrupt fluctuations in MAPK expres Read More

Specific blood coagulation inhibitors from hematophagous organisms, with different structures and novel mechanism of action, have been described and they represent promising agents for the treatment of a variety of human diseases related to coagulation and cancer. In our lab, the salivary glands transcriptome of the adult Amblyomma cajennense tick was previously characterized by expressed sequence tags (EST). Read More

Flooding stress restricts soybean growth, it results in decrease the production. In this report, to understand how nuclear proteins in soybean affected by flooding, abundance changes of those proteins was analyzed. Nuclear proteins were extracted from the root tips of soybean treated with or without flooding stress. The extracted proteins were analyzed using a label-free quantitative proteomic technique. Of a total of 9 Read More

Phosphatases for organophosphate degradation and carbohydrate-binding domains (CBMs) have potential biotechnological applications. As a proof-of-concept, a soluble chimeric protein that combines acid phosphatase (AppA) from Escherichia coli and a CBM from Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. citri (AppA-CBM) was produced in E.coli. AppACBM adsorbed in microcrystalline cellulose Avicel PH101 catalyzed the hydrolysis of p-nitro Read More

Trigger factor (TF) is the first chaperone to interact with nascent chains and facilitate their folding within bacteria. TF possesses a three-state equilibrium in vivo: monomeric TF bound to ribosome, free monomeric, and dimeric TF in cytoplasm. TF consists of an N-terminal ribosome binding domain, a middle peptidyl–prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) domain and a C-terminal domain involved in substrate binding and dimeriz Read More

Thermostable p-nitrophenylphosphatase from Bacillus Stearothermophilus (Bs-TpNPPase) is involved in the Mg2+-dependent hydrolysis of the phosphoenzyme at an optimum reaction temperature of 55°C. Bs-TpNPPase has been cloned and overexpressed in the E.coli M15 strain. Based on the conserved active sites, the protein was suggested to be a member of the haloalkanoate dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily. Two site-s Read More

Neuropeptide FF (NPFF) interacts with specific receptors to regulate diverse biological processes. Its modulatory effect in the immune field, however, has not been fully explored yet. Here, we report that NPFF2 receptors may be functionally expressed in two immune cell models, the primary peritoneal macrophage and RAW 264.7 macrophage. Firstly, the mRNA levels of NPFF2 receptor were up-regulated in macroph Read More

The cardiovascular heat shock protein (cvHsp/HspB7) exhibited cardiac-specific expression and is a possible candidate of dilated cardiomyopathy in heart failure. The molecular characteristics and biochemical properties of cvHsp are only partially understood. This study was aimed to identify the biological properties and molecular high-order structure of cvHsp. The cvHsp protein was prepared by the refined purification at large a Read More