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Kazal-like serine protease inhibitors are defined by a conserved sequence motif. A typical Kazal domain contains six cysteine residues leading to three disulfide bonds with a 1–5/2–4/3–6 pattern. Most Kazal do...
Low concentrations of free magnesium in the intracellular environment can present critical limitations for hammerhead ribozymes, especially for those that are designed for intermolecular (trans) cleavage of a hos...
V-ATPases constitute a ubiquitous family of heteromultimeric, proton translocating proteins. According to their localization in a multitude of eukaryotic membranes, they energize many different transport proce...
Epi-testosterone (epiT) is the 17α-epimer of testosterone. It has been found at similar level as testosterone in human biological fluids. This steroid has thus been used as a natural internal standard for asse...
Lectins are carbohydrate-binding proteins which potentially bind to cell surface glycoconjugates. They are found in various organisms including fungi. A lectin from the mushroom Xerocomus chrysenteron (XCL) has b...
The first aim of the work was to analyze in detail the complexity of the aggregates formed upon overexpression of recombinant proteins in E. coli. A sucrose step gradient succeeded in separating aggregate subclas...
Although it is generally agreed that topography is more conserved than sequences, proteins sharing the same fold can have different functions, while there are protein families with low sequence similarity. An ...
Recent data suggest that ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) exists not only as a heterodimer R12R22 of R12 and R22 homodimers, but also as tetramers R14R24 and hexamers R16R26. Recent data also suggest that ATP binds...
The c-Myc oncogenic transcription factor heterodimerizes with Max, binds specific DNA sites and regulates transcription. The role of Myc in transcriptional activation involves its binding to TRRAP and histone ...
Though Dnmt1 is considered the primary maintenance methyltransferase and Dnmt3a and Dnmt3b are considered de novo methyltransferases in mammals, these three enzymes may work together in maintaining as well as ...
Analysis of fatty acid composition of biological materials is a common task in lipid research. Conventionally, preparation of samples for fatty acid analysis by gas chromatography involves two separate procedu...
Heat shock factor (HSF/HSF1) not only is the transcription factor primarily responsible for the transcriptional response of cells to physical and chemical stress but also coregulates other important signaling ...
The original article was published in BMC Biochemistry 2004 5:2
Protein microarrays represent an emerging class of proteomic tools to investigate multiple protein-protein interactions in parallel. A sufficient proportion of immobilized proteins must maintain an active conf...
Water-soluble quinoprotein glucose dehydrogenase (PQQGDH-B) from Acinetobacter calcoaceticus has a great potential for application as a glucose sensor constituent. Because this enzyme shows no activity in its mon...
Isoprenylcysteine carboxyl methyltransferase (Icmt) is the third of three enzymes that posttranslationally modify proteins that contain C-terminal CaaX motifs. The processing of CaaX proteins through this so-c...
The 26S proteasome is the proteolytic machinery of the ubiquitin-dependent proteolytic system responsible for most of the regulated intracellular protein degradation in eukaryotic cells. Previously, we demonst...
The enzyme porphobilinogen synthase (PBGS), which is central to the biosynthesis of heme, chlorophyll and cobalamins, has long been known to use a variety of metal ions and has recently been shown able to exis...
In establishing structure-function relationships for membrane transport proteins, the interpretation of phenotypic changes can be problematic, owing to uncertainties in protein expression levels, sub-cellular ...
The transcription factor c-Myb is expressed in hematopoietic progenitor cells and other rapidly proliferating tissues, regulating genes important for proliferation, differentiation and survival. The DNA-bindin...
The completion of several genome-sequencing projects has increased our need to assign functions to newly identified genes. The presence of a specific protein domain has been used as the determinant for suggest...
We and others have shown four distinct and presumably related effects of mammalian proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) on DNA synthesis catalyzed by mammalian DNA polymerase δ(pol δ). In the presence of ...
Sphingosine-1-phosphate and lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) are ligands for two related families of G protein-coupled receptors, the S1P and LPA receptors, respectively. The lysophospholipid ligands of these recep...
The acetylation of the core histone NH2-terminal tails is catalyzed by histone acetyltransferases. Histone acetyltransferases can be classified into two distinct groups (type A and B) on the basis of cellular loc...
Electroporation is a common method to introduce foreign molecules into cells, but its molecular basis is poorly understood. Here I investigate the mechanism of pore formation by direct molecular dynamics simul...
One strategy to increase the stability of proteins is to reduce the area of water-accessible hydrophobic surface.
Apyrases are divalent ion dependent tri- and dinucleotide phosphatases with different substrate specificity. The intracellular lysosomal apyrase LALP70 is also expressed as a splice variant (LALP70v) lacking a...
Nudix hydrolases form a protein family whose function is to hydrolyse intracellular nucleotides and so regulate their levels and eliminate potentially toxic derivatives. The genome of the radioresistant bacter...
The S. cerevisiae carbamylphosphate synthetase – aspartate transcarbamylase multifunctional protein catalyses the first two reactions of the pyrimidine pathway. In this organism, these two reactions are feedback ...
The anti-inflammatory properties of some flavonoids have been attributed to their ability to inhibit the production of NO by activated macrophages. Soybean cotyledons accumulate certain flavonoids following el...
The NodH sulfotransferase from Sinorhizobium meliloti has been used to radiolabel lipochitooligosaccharidic (LCO) Nod factor signals with 35S from inorganic sulfate in a two-step enzymatic procedure. The first st...
In rats, two peroxisomal 3-ketoacyl-CoA thiolase genes (A and B) have been cloned, whereas only one thiolase gene is found in humans. The aim of this study was thus to clone the different mouse thiolase genes in ...
Lipid phosphate phosphatases (LPPs) are integral membrane proteins believed to dephosphorylate bioactive lipid messengers, so modifying or attenuating their activities. Wunen, a Drosophila LPP homologue, has b...
The Erratum to this article has been published in BMC Biochemistry 2005 6:3
Coxiella burnetii is the etiological agent of Q fever found worldwide. The microorganism has like other Gram-negative bacteria a lipopolysaccharide (LPS, endotoxin) in its outer membrane, which is important for t...
Riboflavin synthase catalyzes the transformation of 6,7-dimethyl-8-ribityllumazine into riboflavin in the last step of the riboflavin biosynthetic pathway. Gram-negative bacteria and certain yeasts are unable ...
CD147 is a broadly distributed integral membrane glycoprotein with two Ig-like domains implicated in a wide range of functions. It is associated at the cell surface with the monocarboxylate transporters MCT1 a...
Galactokinase catalyses the first committed step of galactose catabolism in which the sugar is phosphorylated at the expense of MgATP. Recent structural studies suggest that the enzyme makes several contacts w...
Mycoplasma contaminations are a recurrent problem in the use of cultured cells, including human cells, especially as it has been shown to impede cell cycle, triggering cell death under various conditions. More...
The co-chaperonin protein 10 (cpn10) assists cpn60 in the folding of nonnative polypeptides in a wide range of organisms. All known cpn10 molecules are heptamers of seven identical subunits that are linked tog...
Kynureninase is a key enzyme on the kynurenine pathway of tryptophan metabolism. One of the end products of the pathway is the neurotoxin quinolinic acid which appears to be responsible for neuronal cell death...
To identify thermophile-specific proteins, we performed phylogenetic patterns searches of 66 completely sequenced microbial genomes. This analysis revealed a cluster of orthologous groups (COG1618) which conta...
Jerboa (Jaculus orientalis) is a deep hibernating rodent native to subdesert highlands. During hibernation, a high level of ketone bodies i.e. acetoacetate (AcAc) and D-3-hydroxybutyrate (BOH) are produced in liv...
Annexin II heavy chain (also called p36, calpactin I) is lost in prostate cancers and in a majority of prostate intraepithelial neoplasia (PIN). Loss of annexin II heavy chain appears to be specific for prosta...
Reelin, intensively studied as an extracellular protein that regulates brain development, is also expressed in a variety of tissues and a circulating pool of reelin exists in adult mammals. Here we describe th...
Annexin A7 is a Ca2+- and phospholipid-binding protein expressed as a 47 and 51 kDa isoform, which is thought to be involved in membrane fusion processes. Recently the 47 kDa isoform has been identified in erythr...
The binding of ligands to clusters of complement-type repeat (CR)-domains in proteins of the low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) family is dependent on Ca2+ ions. One reason for this cation requirement was id...
During Xenopus oocyte maturation, the amount of a 48 kDa protein detected in the 26S proteasome fraction (p48) decreased markedly during oocyte maturation to the low levels seen in unfertilized eggs. The results ...
The plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) spontaneously converts from an inhibitory into a latent form. Specificity of PAI-1 is mainly determined by its reactive site (Arg346-Met347), which interacts with ...
The purine salvage enzyme inosine 5'-monophosphate (IMP)-specific 5'-nucleotidase catalyzes degradation of IMP to inosine. Although this enzymatic activity has been purified and characterized in Saccharomyces cer...
The Arabidopsis genome contains nine sucrose transporter paralogs falling into three clades: SUT1-like, SUT2 and SUT4. The carriers differ in their kinetic properties. Many transport proteins are known to exis...