188 Results Found

In the present study, the reaction conditions for homodimerization process of 3-acetylcoumarin were achieved under sonication using combination of zinc and metallic salt (ZnCl₂ or Zn(OAc)₂). Appropriate frequency and sound amplitude have been identif...

The current study is a continuation of our previous investigations into the radical homodimeric reaction mechanism of 3-acetylcoumarin. In the current study, the effects of different substituents on the coumarin ring of 3-acetylcoumarin are investiga...

Pertuzumab (Perjeta) is an anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody that is used for treatment of HER2-positive breast cancers in combination with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and docetaxel and showed promising clinical outcomes. Pertuzumab is suggested to block het...

Interleukin-2 (IL-2) is a pleiotropic cytokine regulating the immune and nervous systems. Mammalian and bird IL-2s have different protein sequences, but perform similar functions. In the current study, two bands were detected by immunoblotting using...

Transcription factors play a crucial role in regulating biological processes such as cell growth, differentiation, organ development and cellular signaling. Within this group, proteins equipped with zinc finger motifs (ZFs) represent the largest fami...

Increased expression of BIRC5/survivin, a crucial regulator of the mitotic spindle checkpoint, is associated with poor prognosis in neuroblastoma (NB), the most common extracranial tumor of childhood. Transcriptional inhibitors of survivin have been...

The quaternary transition between the relaxed (R) and tense (T) states of heme-binding proteins is a textbook example for the allosteric structural transition. Homodimeric hemoglobin (HbI) from Scapharca inaequivalvis is a useful model system for inv...

Melanomas harboring NRAS mutations are a particularly aggressive and deadly subtype. If patients cannot tolerate or the melanomas are insensitive to immune checkpoint blockade, there are no effective 2nd-line treatment options. Drugs targeting the RA...

Staphylococcal exfoliative toxins (ETs) are glutamyl endopeptidases that specifically cleave the Glu381-Gly382 bond in the ectodomains of desmoglein 1 (Dsg1) via complex action mechanisms. To date, four ETs have been identified in different Staphyloc...

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a leading cause of severe diseases in immunocompromised individuals, including AIDS patients and transplant recipients, and in congenitally infected newborns. The utility of available drugs is limited by poor bioavaila...

Zinc finger proteins play pivotal roles in health and disease and exert critical functions in various cellular processes. A majority of zinc finger proteins bind DNA and act as transcription factors. B-cell lymphoma/leukemia 11B (BCL11B) represents o...

The primary function of mitochondria is energy production, a task of particular importance especially for cells with a high energy demand like cardiomyocytes. The B-cell lymphoma (BCL-2) family member BCL-2 adenovirus E1B 19 kDa-interacting protein 3...

The isolation of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) cDNA was successful around 30 years ago. The characteristics of ERα protein have been examined from various aspects, primarily through in vitro cell culture studies, but more recently using i...

Endothelin-1 (ET-1) is a potent vasoconstrictor that exerts its numerous biological actions through two receptors, ET_A and ET_B. However, the implication and role of each receptor in ROS generation remain ambiguous. Previously, our group reported that...

Previous studies revealed that phenylmethimazole (C10) inhibits IRF3 signaling, preventing dsRNA-induction of type 1 interferon gene expression, production, and downstream signaling. In the present study, we investigated the molecular basis for C10 i...

Many proteins have a multimeric structure and are composed of two or more identical subunits. While this can be advantageous for the host organism, it can be a challenge when targeting specific residues in biochemical analyses. In vitro splitting and...

A Type I reaction center (RC) (Fe-S type, ferredoxin reducing) is found in several phyla containing anoxygenic phototrophic bacteria. These include the heliobacteria (HB), the green sulfur bacteria (GSB), and the chloracidobacteria (CB), for which hi...

A particularly interesting marker to identify anti-tumor immune cells is the neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM), also known as cluster of differentiation (CD)56. Namely, hematopoietic expression of CD56 seems to be confined to powerful effector imm...

Laccases have great potential for industrial applications due to their green catalytic properties and broad substrate specificities, and various studies have attempted to improve the catalytic performance of these enzymes. Here, to the best of our kn...

Symmetry is an intrinsic property of homo-oligomers. Amine oxidases are multidomain homodimeric enzymes that contain one catalytic site per subunit, and that share a high homology degree. In this paper, we investigated, by fluorescence spectroscopy m...

In the crystal structure of ferredoxin-NADP⁺ oxidoreductase from Bacillus subtilis (BsFNR), Tyr50 stacks on the si-face of the isoalloxazine ring portion of the FAD prosthetic group. This configuration is highly conserved among the homodimeric ferred...

Membrane-bound inorganic pyrophosphatase (mPPase) resembles the F-ATPase in catalyzing polyphosphate-energized H⁺ and Na⁺ transport across lipid membranes, but differs structurally and mechanistically. Homodimeric mPPase likely uses a “direct couplin...

G-protein-coupled receptors associate into dimers/oligomers whose function is not well understood. One approach to investigate this issue is to challenge oligomerization by peptides replicating transmembrane domains and to study their effect on recep...

The recent developments in the delivery and design of transcription factors put their therapeutic applications within reach, exemplified by cell replacement, cancer differentiation and T-cell based cancer therapies. The success of such applications d...

Radiopharmaceuticals based on the highly potent FAP inhibitor (FAPi) UAMC-1110 have shown great potential in molecular imaging, but the short tumor retention time of the monomers do not match the physical half-lives of the important therapeutic radio...

While a certain level of inflammation is critical for humans to survive infection and injury, a prolonged inflammatory response can have fatal consequences. Pattern recognition Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are key players in the initiation of an inflam...

Orexins/hypocretins are neuropeptides formed by proteolytic cleavage of a precursor peptide, which are produced by neurons found in the lateral hypothalamus. The G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) for these ligands, the OX₁ and OX₂ orexin receptors,...

A new method for faster and simple preparation of 3,3′,4,4′-tetrahydro-3,3′-disubstituted-4,4′-biscoumarins with participation of an organozinc reagent is reported. The reaction is promoted by ultrasound irradiation and it offers a simple experimenta...

Microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) are essential for the accurate division of a cell into two daughter cells. These proteins target specific microtubules to be incorporated into the spindle midzone, which comprises a special array of microtubules...

Information flow from a source to a receiver becomes informative when the recipient can process the signal into a meaningful form. Information exchange and interpretation is essential in biology and understanding how cells integrate signals from a va...

Melanocortin 4 receptor (MC4R) is part of the leptin-melanocortin pathway and plays an essential role in mediating energy homeostasis. Mutations in the MC4R are the most frequent monogenic cause for obesity. Due to increasing numbers of people with e...

Human papillomavirus is the most common viral infectious agent responsible for cancer development in humans. High-risk strains are known to induce cancer through the expression of the viral oncogenes E6 and E7, yet we have only a partial understandin...

Gremlin-1 is a secreted cystine-knot protein that acts as an antagonist of bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), and as a ligand of heparin and the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2), thus regulating several physiological and pathol...

The marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum originated from a series of secondary symbiotic events and has been used as a model organism for studying diatom biology. A novel type II homodimeric isocitrate dehydrogenase from P. tricornutum (PtIDH1) wa...

Humanin is the first identified mitochondrial-derived peptide. Humanin-G (HNG) is a variant of Humanin that has significantly higher cytoprotective properties. Here, we describe the stability features of HNG in different conditions and characterize H...

The S100 proteins are small, ubiquitous, mostly homodimeric proteins containing two EF-hand structures, that is, helix-loop-helix motifs specialized in high-affinity calcium-binding (~10⁻⁶ M) [...]

Several intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are capable to adopt stable structures without interacting with a folded partner. When the folding of all interacting partners happens at the same time, coupled with the interaction in a synergistic ma...

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) lack a well-defined 3D structure. Their disordered nature enables them to interact with several other proteins and to fulfil their vital biological roles, in most cases after coupled folding and binding. In th...

In Drosophila melanogaster, CLAMP is an essential zinc-finger transcription factor that is involved in chromosome architecture and functions as an adaptor for the dosage compensation complex. Most of the known Drosophila architectural proteins have s...

Mutations in activin-like kinase 2 (ALK2), e.g., ALK2-R206H, induce aberrant signaling to SMAD1/5/8, leading to Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP). In spite of extensive studies, the underlying mechanism is still unclear. Here, we quantified...

Asymmetric bispecific antibodies are a rapidly expanding therapeutic antibody class, designed to recognize two different target epitopes concurrently to achieve novel functions not available with normal antibodies. Many therapeutic designs require an...

Thermophilic proteins have evolved different strategies to maintain structure and function at high temperatures; they have large, hydrophobic cores, and feature increased electrostatic interactions, with disulfide bonds, salt-bridging, and surface ch...

HOX genes play essential roles in patterning the anteroposterior axis of animal embryos and in the formation of various organs. In mammals, there are 39 HOX genes organized into four clusters (HOXA–D) located on different chromosomes. In relati...

Aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency is a rare monogenic disease due to mutations in the ddc gene producing AADC, a homodimeric pyridoxal 5′-phosphate-dependent enzyme. The disorder is often fatal in the first decade and is chara...

Background: Since cytokine receptor-like factor 1 (CRLF1) has been implicated in tissue regeneration, we hypothesized that CRLF1 released by mesenchymal stem cells can promote the repair of osteochondral defects. Methods: The degree of a femoral oste...

Bexarotene, a drug approved for treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL), is classified as a rexinoid by its ability to act as a retinoid X receptor (RXR) agonist with high specificity. Rexinoids are capable of inducing RXR homodimerization lead...

Trypanothione disulfide reductase (TryR) is an essential homodimeric enzyme of trypanosomatid parasites that has been validated as a drug target to fight human infections. Using peptides and peptidomimetics, we previously obtained proof of concept th...

A new 14-membered homodimeric macrodiolide, brevidiolide (3), along with four known aromatic compounds (1, 2, 4 and 5) were obtained by heterologous expression of the recombinant plasmid pWLI823 expressing the G231L variant of VioA in the marine-deri...

We have characterized a homodimeric tRNA endonuclease from the euryarchaeota Ferroplasma acidarmanus (FERAC), a facultative anaerobe which can grow at temperatures ranging from 35 to 42 °C. This enzyme, contrary to the eukaryal tRNA endonucleases...

Amino acids with small side chains and motifs of small residues in a distance of four are rather abundant in human single-span transmembrane helices. While interaction of such helices appears to be common, the role of the small residues in mediating...