Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 22, Issue 6, 2015

Two shorter peptides derived from enterocin CRL35, a 43-mer bacteriocin, were synthesized i.e. the N-terminal fragment spanning from residues 1 to 15, and a 28-mer fragment that represents the Cterminal of enterocin CRL35, the residues 16 to 43. The separate peptides showed no activity when combined. On one hand, the 28-mer peptide displayed an unpredicted antimicrobial activity. On the other, 15- mer peptide had no Read More

The effect of reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) glutathione on the bioactivity of insulin was studied. A polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) of insulin with low molecular weight chitosan (13 kDa) was prepared and characterized. The PEC was then solubilized, in the presence and absence of GSH and GSSG, in a reverse micelle consisting of oleic acid and two surfactants (PEG-8 caprylic/capric glycerides and polyglycerol-6-dioleate). Th Read More

Ribosome inactivating proteins (RIPs) are a family of proteins produced by plants, bacteria and fungi. RIPs have specific N-glycosidase activity, and they cleave a specific glycosidic bond in a universally conserved stem and loop structure within the large ribosomal RNA of all organisms. Saporin, a cytotoxic RIP from the plant Saponaria officinalis has been earlier shown to manifest its cytotoxicity by a combination of its N-glycosidas Read More

Behcet's disease (BD) is a recurrent pathema with a typical symptom of inflammation involved in many organs. Previous report indicated that the serum of Korean patients with BD stimulates membrane expression of hnRNP A2/B1 in endothelial cells. In this study, the target 35 kDa recombinant human hnRNP A2/B1 were over-expressed and purified, then sequenced with MALDI-TOF-TOF mass spectrometry. Western Read More

Two structurally distinct N-terminal propeptides are known in thermolysin-like proteases (TLPs). Propeptides of the first type are similar to the prosequence of thermolysin, while the second type propeptides resemble the protealysin propeptide. At the same time, the catalytic domains of all enzymes of the family are highly similar. The available data suggest that the propeptides determine the biological function of TLPs. It wa Read More

Determining the substrate specificity of a protease is essential for developing assays, inhibitors and understanding the mechanisms of the enzyme. In this work, we have profiled the specificity of Peptidyl-Lys metallopeptidase, (LysN), of Armillaria mellea, by a synthetic fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) positional-scanning library. The library was based on a reference sequence K(Abz)-S-A-Q-K-M-V-S-K(Dnp), where t Read More

Cathepsin E is an aspartic protease that belongs to the pepsin family. This protease is similar to cathepsin D but differs in its tissue distribution and cell localization. Elevated levels of this enzyme are linked to several tumors, including devastating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. In this manuscript, we present a new protocol for the high-yield purification of recombinant human cathepsin E in the baculovirus expression s Read More

After Ctr1-mediated cell uptake, copper (Cu) is transported by the cytoplasmic Cu chaperone Atox1 to P1B type ATPases ATP7A and ATP7B in the Golgi network, for incorporation into Cudependent enzymes. Atox1 is a small 68-residue protein that binds Cu in a conserved CXXC motif; it delivers Cu to target domains in ATP7A/B via direct protein-protein interactions. Specific transcription factors regulating expression of the human Read More

PP2A is a serine/threonine phosphatase critical to a number of physiological and developmental processes. In this manuscript, we show that a peptide, specifically blocking the caspase- 9/PP2A interaction, DPT-C9h, induces apoptosis in primary tumour B cells isolated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells or bone marrow of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients, but not on B cells obtained from healthy donors (HD) Read More

Most published articles always applied a certain model or arithmetic to only a certain dataset. Considering the avalanche of biological data created in the post-genomic age, this type of research shows many shortcomings and inefficient characteristics, because it is always have difficulties to apply the same model to different datasets. So we proposed a multifunctional ensemble classifier which combines several individual clas Read More

An endo-pectate lyase (PL1B) of family 1 polysaccharide lyase from Clostridium thermocellum was structurally characterized and its stability under chaotropic agent was determined. The putative domain PL1B was identified from the protein sequence ABN53381.1 belonging to superfamily 3 of pectate lyase. Multiple sequence alignment of PL1B with other known pectate lyases revealed the conserved and semi-conserved residu Read More