Protein and Peptide Letters - Volume 20, Issue 7, 2013

Brucellosis is a disease caused by bacteria belonging to the genus Brucella. It affects cattle, goat, sheep, dog and humans. The serodiagnosis of brucellosis involves detection of antibodies generated against the LPS or whole cell bacterial extracts, however these tests lack sensitivity and specificity. The present study was performed to optimize the culture condition for the production of recombinant Brucella melitensis out Read More

Superoxide dismutase is an important enzyme with various therapeutic applications. Search of a new source of superoxide dismutase with novel properties has significant importance. The current work reports purification of a novel superoxide dismutase enzyme with unique characteristics. A copper zinc superoxide dismutase (Cu-Zn SOD) was purified and characterized from Cicer arietinum L. seedlings germinated under alu Read More

A thermostable superoxide dismutase from a thermophilic bacterium, called Geobacillus wiegeli (GWE1), isolated from the interior of a sterilization drying oven, was purified by anion-exchange and molecular size-exclusion liquid chromatography. On the basis of SDS-PAGE, the purified enzyme was found to be homogeneous and showed an estimated subunit molecular mass of 23.9 kDa. The holoenzyme is a homotetramer of 97 Read More

The solubility and structural properties of halophilic proteins are ascribed to their abundant acidic residues, resulting in large net negative charges at neutral pH. This study examined the effects of low pH, i.e., reduction of net negative charges on the structural properties of starch binding domain (SBD) of halophilic Kocuria varians α-amylase. Titration to pH 2.1 caused loss of 233 nm peak characteristic of aromatic interact Read More

Hainantoxin-III (HNTX-III) purified from the venom of the spider Ornithoctonus hainana is a novel neurotoxin preferentially inhibiting tetrodotoxin-sensitive voltage-gated sodium channels in rat dorsal root ganglion cells. The structure of this toxin in aqueous solution was investigated using 2-D 1H-NMR techniques. The complete sequencespecific assignments of proton resonances in the 1H-NMR spectra were obtained by analyzi Read More

A novel lectin was isolated from the dried fruiting bodies of the wild mushroom Paxillus involutus. Isolation was conducted by anion exchange chromatography on DEAE-Cellulose, Q-Sepharose and gel filtration on Superdex 75 using a fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC) system. This lectin had a molecular mass of 28 kDa and was composed of four identical subunits, each with a molecular mass of 7 kDa. N-terminal a Read More

The molecular dynamics simulation method was used to investigate the structural details for human prion protein (PrPN) and its D178N mutant (PrPM). Root-mean-square fluctuations (RMSFs) and the root-mean-square deviations (RMSDs) showed an increase in the flexibility and high dynamic plasticity of PrPM. Average Total energy for PrPM and PrPN sequentially was -2.975 x105 (kJmol-1) and -3.193 x 105 (kJmol-1). T Read More

Prediction of essential proteins of a pathogenic organism is the key for the potential drug target identification, because inhibition of these would be fatal for the pathogen. Identification of these proteins requires the use of complex experimental techniques which are quite expensive and time consuming. We implemented Support Vector Machine algorithm to develop a classifier model for in silico prediction of prokaryotic essen Read More

CEL-I is a Gal/GalNAc-specific C-type lectin isolated from the sea cucumber Cucumaria echinata. This lectin is composed of two carbohydrate-recognition domains (CRDs) with the carbohydrate-recognition motif QPD (Gln-Pro- Asp), which is generally known to exist in galactose-specific C-type CRDs. In the present study, a mutant CEL-I with EPN (Glu-Pro-Asn) motif, which is thought to be responsible for the carbohydrate-re Read More

SecA ATPase plays a crucial role in translocation of membrane and secreted polypeptides and proteins in bacteria and therefore a perfect target for novel antimicrobial drug design. Herein, we generated QSAR models with an alignment-independent method. The optimum model obtained for the training set was statistically significant with crossvalidation regression coefficient (q2) value of 0.40 and correlation coefficient (r2) v Read More

An improved isocaudamer tandem repeat strategy for the production of short functional peptide was demonstrated in the study. The coding sequence of short peptide was codon optimized, and two isocaudamers were induced into the end of coding sequence. By re-cutting with isocaudamers and re-ligating, the coding sequence of short peptide in the expression vector was increased in a multiple manner (21, 22 Read More

Palustrin-OG1 (OG1) is a host defense peptide isolated from the frog Odorrana grahami. In this study, we analyzed the chemical properties, antimicrobial activities and cytotoxicities of OG1 and its derivatives to identify the most promising peptide as an antimicrobial agent. By increasing the net positive charge, amphipathicity and decreasing the mean hydrophobicity of OG1, the derivative named as OG2 exerted higher a Read More

The goose parvovirus (GPV) Rep1 protein is both essential for viral replication and a potential target for GPV diagnosis, but its protein characterization and intracellular localization is not clear. We constructed a recombinant plasmid, pET28a/GPV-Rep1, and expressed the Rep1 gene in BL21 (DE3) Escherichia coli. A protein approximately 75 kDa in size was obtained from lysates of E. coli cells expressing the recombin Read More

Picrorhiza kurroa, an endangered medicinal plant found in the North-Western Himalayan region has a number of medicinal properties due to the presence of metabolites picroside-I and picroside-II. It is used in various herbal formulations like Picroliv, Livokin, Picrolax, Livomap, Tefroliv etc. Review of literature revealed that no information is available as of today on the proteome analysis of Picrorhiza kurroa. Hence, we aim t Read More

One of the hallmarks of halophilic properties is reversibility of thermal unfolding. A nucleoside diphosphate kinase (NDK) from a moderate halophile Halomonas sp. 593 (HaNDK) follows this behavior. His-tagged chimeric NDK (HisPaHaNDK) consisting of an N-terminal half of a non-halophilic Pseuodomonas aeruginosa NDK (PaNDK) and a Cterminal half of HaNDK loses this reversible property, indicating a critical role of the N-t Read More