Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 21, Issue 9, 2014

Flooding is one of the serious problems for soybean plants because it inhibits growth. Proteomic and metabolomic techniques were used to determine whether proteins and metabolites are altered in the root tips of soybeans under flooding stress. Two-day-old soybean plants were flooded for 2 days, and proteins and metabolites were extracted from root tips. Flooding-responsive proteins were identified using two-d Read More

Bacillus subtilis HSO121 was previously isolated from the formation water of an oil field and found to produce surfactin lipopeptides. Effects of 10 different components on surfactin production have been studied by Plackett- Burman design (PBD). Each component was screened on the basis of P-value, which was at 92% or above of confidence level. In PBD, significant factors influencing the surfactin production were selected for Read More

7α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (7α-HSDH, EC 1.1.1.159), one of the short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase superfamily, catalyzes the dehydrogenation of C7 hydroxyl group of the steroid skeleton of bile acids. Clostridium absonum 7α-HSDH (Ca 7α-HSDH) was cloned and heterologously expressed in Escherichia coli. The function of carboxyterminal (C-terminal) and Arg38 of Ca 7α-HSDH was investigated th Read More

WH1fungin (WF), a lipopeptide surfactin, has been verified as an immunoadjuvant previously. In this study, mice were intranasally or parenterally immunized with WF plus Hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), then the immune responses were detected. The results showed 50 µg WF plus 20 μg HBsAg for intranasal and 10 μg WF plus 1 µg HBsAg for parenteral immunization was efficient inducing strong immune response against Read More

Flooding is a serious abiotic stress for soybean because it restricts growth and reduces grain yields. To investigate the effect of gibberellic acid (GA) on soybean under flooding stress, root proteins were analyzed using a gel-free proteomic technique. Proteins were extracted from the roots of 4-days-old soybean seedlings exposed to flooding stress in the presence and absence of exogenous GA3 for 2 days. A total of 307, 324, an Read More

α-Amylases hydrolyze α- 1,4-glycosidic bonds during assimilation of biological macromolecules. The amino acid sequences of these enzymes in thousands of diverse organisms are known and the 3D structures of several proteins have been solved. The 3D structure analysis of these universal enzymes from diverse organisms has been studied by the generation of phylogenetic trees and structure based sequence analysis to ge Read More

Cystatin F is a unique member of the cystatin family of cysteine protease inhibitors, which is synthesized as an inactive dimer and it is activated by N-terminal cleavage in the endolysosomes. It is expressed in the cells of the immune system: myeloid cells and the cells involved in target cell killing: natural killer (NK) cells and cytotoxic T cells (CTLs). Upon activation of the NK cells with interleukin 2 (IL-2), cystatin F was found u Read More

Protein hydrolysates are widely applied as antioxidants in nutrition, but the potential antioxidant activities of small peptides remain unknown. Therefore, we investigated the antioxidant activities of small peptides isolated from solid-state fermented sesame meal via Sephadex G-15 chromotography. The scavenging capacities for 2, 2- diphenylpicrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and hydroxyl (•OH) radicals as well as the total redu Read More