Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 20, Issue 11, 2013

In this study, the influence of isoleucine and arginine on the biological activity and peptide-membrane interactions of linear avian β-defensin-4 (RL38) analogs was investigated. Results of biological activities showed that the antimicrobial activities of AvBD-4 analogs were closely related to hydrophobicity and amphipathicity. The peptide GLI19 with high hydrophobicity value and amphipathicity displayed broad spectrum anti Read More

The interaction of non-phosphorylated L-type pyruvate kinase (L-PK) with fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (FBP), which is an allosteric activator of the phosphorylated enzyme, and peptides that mimic the phosphorylatable N-terminal regulatory domain of the enzyme, was studied. It was found that the catalytic activity of the enzyme was not enhanced in the presence of FBP, and this ligand acted as a relatively weak reversible inhibit Read More

VML is a lectin from Vatairea macrocarpa seeds that has various biological activities. Here, we describe three new lectin isoforms from V. macrocarpa identified through genomic DNA analysis. One of these isoforms has high similarity to VML, while another that has noteworthy differences. We have denoted the new isoforms as VML-2, VML-3 and VML-4. Recombinant VML (rVML) and VML-2 (rVML-2) were expres Read More

Human ryanodine receptor 2 (hRyR2) is a calcium ion channel present in the membrane of the sarcoplasmic reticulum of cardiac myocytes that mediates release of calcium ions from the sarcoplasmic reticulum stores during excitation- contraction coupling. Disease-causing mutations of hRyR2 are clustered into N-terminal (amino acids 1-600), central (amino acids 2100-2500) and C-terminal (amino acids 3900-5000) regi Read More

Amphibian skin secretions contain a plethora of pharmacologically-active substances and represent established sources of bioactive peptides, including tachykinins. Tachykinins are one of the most widely-studied peptide families in animals and are found in neuroendocrine tissues from the lowest vertebrates to mammals. They are characterized by the presence of a highly-conserved C-terminal pentapeptide amide sequenc Read More

Present study dealt with the production, purification and characterization of xylanase from Bacillus subtilis- BS05 grown in submerged fermentation at 37°C for 48h using sugarcane bagasse as a substrate. Xylanase enzyme was purified to homogeneity by ammonium sulphate fractionation followed by sephadex G-100 chromatography. The molecular mass of xylanase enzyme was found to be 23kDa by SDS-PAGE. The optim Read More

Hypobromous acid (HOBr) is a powerful oxidant produced by stimulated neutrophils and eosinophils. Taurine, a non-protein amino acid present in high amounts in the leukocytes, reacts instantaneously with HOBr leading to their haloamine derivative taurine dibromamine (Tau-NBr2). Lysozyme is a bactericidal enzyme also present in leukocytes and in secretory fluids. The inhibition of lysozyme is a pathway for bacterial proliferat Read More

The crystal complex propofol/GLIC (the bacterial homologue from Gloeobacter violaceus) recently determined also showed sensitivity to general anesthetics, belonging to the pLGIC (pentameric ligand-gated ion channels) family as a homopentameric member, which are potentiated and inhibited by general anesthetics and mimic changes elicited by anesthetics in physiologic targets as ion channels, providing the useful inf Read More

Aurora-A, B and C are non-receptor serine/threonine kinases in Homo sapiens. In spite of high similarity in their sequences, they possess distinct binding partners. These kinases play an important role in cell division and overexpressed in certain cancers. It has been demonstrated that Gly198 in Aurora-A kinase is responsible for its basal kinase activity, the mutation G198N transforms Aurora-A to Aurora-B like function and local Read More

Ribosome-inactivating proteins (RIPs) function to inhibit protein synthesis through the removal of specific adenine residues from eukaryotic ribosomal RNA and rending the 60S subunit unable to bind elongation factor 2. They have received much attention in biological and biomedical research due to their unique activities toward tumor cells, as well as the important roles in plant defense. Alpha-momorcharin (α-MC), a Read More

We modified amylin chemically by conjugating methoxyl polyethyleneglycol succinimidyl carbonate (mPEGSC) of varying molecular weights (1 kDa, 2 kDa and 5 kDa). The reaction occurred within a few minutes, resulting in at least four distinct PEGylated products. The reaction products were separated by reversed-phase chromatography and identified by mass-spectrometry. The monoPEGylated and diPEGylated amylin produ Read More

Human N-formyl peptide receptors (FPRs) belong to the G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) superfamily, the most frequently addressed drug targets in the pharmaceutical industry, and are considered to play important roles in innate immunity and host defense mechanisms. Although still a highly challenging task, the availability of soluble and functional GPCRs including FPRs in milligram quantities is essential to spur the ad Read More

This research is focussed on predicting through Naive Bayes learning, the possible p53 rescue mutants from amino-acid substitutions at the second, third and fourth site recombination that could reinstate normal p53 activity. The Naive Bayes probability values of the amino-acid substitutions at the respective site-wise recombination were utilized to formulate the proposed Genetic Mutant Marker Extraction (GMME) technique that Read More