Human and great ape milks contain a diverse array of milk oligosaccharides, but little is known about the milk oligosaccharides of other primates, and how they differ among taxa. Neutral and acidic oligosaccharides were isolated from the milk of three species of Old World or catarrhine monkeys (Cercopithecidae: rhesus macaque ...

Nanopores are under investigation for single-molecule DNA sequencing. The alpha-hemolysin (alphaHL) protein nanopore contains three recognition points capable of nucleobase discrimination in individual immobilized ssDNA molecules. We have modified the recognition point R(1) by extensive mutagenesis of residue 113. Amino acids that provide an energy barrier to ion flow (e.g., ...

It is well established that the vast majority of proteins of all taxonomical groups and species are initiated by an AUG codon, translated into the amino acid methionine (Met). Many attempts were made to evaluate the importance of the sequences surrounding the initiation codon, mostly focusing on the RNA sequence. ...

Ganoderma--"Lingzhi" in Chinese--is one of the superior Chinese tonic materia medicas in China, Japan, and Korea. Two species, Ganoderma lucidum (Red Lingzhi) and G. sinense (Purple Lingzhi), have been included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia since its 2000 Edition. However, some other species of Ganoderma are also available in the market. ...

The quality parameters of 1 commercial pomegranate juice mixed with 5 different concentrations of blueberry, blackberry, or raspberry juices were studied. The pH, total soluble solids content, titratable acidity, and total phenolic content were determined. To understand the aroma differences of the juices, solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was used ...

Chicken leg pieces (60 g each). with optimized quantity of additives were fried in hydrogenated vegetable oil at 180°C for 8 min. The fried product was packed in paper-foil-polyethylene pouches (PFP) and stored under ambient (20 ± 5°C, 65-80% RH), refrigerator (5°C, 80% RH) and deep freezer (-18°C, 85-90% RH) ...

Process for preparation of ripe banana slices using osmotic dehydration was standardized. Fully ripe banana fruits were peeled and slices of 8 mm thickness were prepared. The slices were divided into 5 lots and pretreated with sulphur fumigation @ 2 g/kg of slices for 2 h then each lot was ...

The ability of Antarctic ice algae, Chlamydomonas sp. ICE-L, to survive and proliferate at low temperature and high salinity implies that they have overcome key barriers inherent in Antarctic environments. A full-length complementary DNA (cDNA) sequence of omega-3 fatty acid desaturase, designated CiFAD3, was isolated via reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction ...

Comparison of paralogous vitellogenins in 10 insect species representing six orders showed a remarkable degree of conservation of amino acid composition in spite of sequence differences. For example, the correlation between the percentages of the 20 amino acids in two vitellogenins from the beetle Tribolium castaneum was 0.975, even though ...

An insertion of one or two amino acids at the monomer-monomer junctions of polyubiquitin is a distinct and highly conserved molecular character that is shared by two very diverse clades of microeukaryotes, the Cercozoa and the Foraminifera. It has been suggested that an insertion consisting of one amino acid, like ...

The P2Y(1) receptor is localized to the basolateral membrane of polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells. In the present study, we identified a 25-residue region within the C-terminal tail (C-tail) of the P2Y(1) receptor that directs basolateral sorting. Deletion of this sorting signal caused redirection of the receptor to the ...

CwlQ (previous YjbJ) is one of the putative cell wall hydrolases in Bacillus subtilis. Its domain has an amino acid sequence similar to the soluble-lytic transglycosylase (SLT) of Escherichia coli Slt70 and also goose lysozyme (muramidase). To characterize the enzyme, the domain of CwlQ was cloned and expressed in E. ...

Functional divergence between homologous proteins is expected to affect amino acid sequences in two main ways, which can be considered as proxies of biochemical divergence: a "covarion-like" pattern of correlated changes in evolutionary rates, and switches in conserved residues ("conserved but different"). Although these patterns have been used in case ...

Sterol 14α-demethylases (14DM) comprise the CYP51 cytochrome P450 genome family. The 14DM reaction is essential for the biosynthesis of sterols which are necessary for production of cellular membranes. This is the most widely distributed P450, being present in all biological kingdoms. From one kingdom to another the primary amino acid ...

Mannheimia haemolytica infection results in enhanced PMN-mediated tissue damage in the lungs of bighorn sheep (BHS) compared to that of domestic sheep (DS). SERPIN B1 is an inhibitor of PMN-derived serine proteases. It prevents lung tissue injury by inhibiting the serine proteases released as a result of PMN lysis and ...

The elaboration of biologically important 3,4-substituted pyrazolines was achieved by an organocatalysed aza-Michael/transimination domino sequence between hydrazones and enones making use of a mixture of heterogeneous resin-bound acid/base reagents. This methodology nicely illustrates the site isolation concept of supported reagents allowing the simultaneous use of otherwise destructive reactive functionalities.

The objective of the present study was to characterize the primary structure of emu myoglobin (Mb). Emu Mb was isolated from Iliofibularis muscle employing gel-filtration chromatography. Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry was employed to determine the exact molecular mass of emu Mb in comparison with horse ...

The increase of the acidic nature of proteins as an adaptation to hypersalinity has been well documented within halophile isolates. Here we explore the effect of salinity on amino acid preference on an environmental scale. Via pyrosequencing, we have obtained two distinct metagenomic data sets from the Dead Sea, one ...

Protein sequence conservation is a powerful and widely used indicator for predicting catalytic residues from enzyme sequences. In order to incorporate amino acid similarity into conservation measures, one attempt is to group amino acids into disjoint sets. In this paper, based on the overlapping amino acids classification proposed by Taylor, ...

An alkaline pectate lyase, Bsp165PelA, was purified to homogeneity from the culture broth of alkaliphilic Bacillus sp. N16-5. The enzyme showed a specific activity as high as 1000 U/mg and had optimum activity at pH 11.5 and 50 degrees . It was composed of a single polypeptide chain with a ...

Supercontraction is commonly considered as a functional adaptation of major ampullate gland (MA) silk to its role as the main structural material in orb-webs. However, the observation of supercontraction in the dragline silk of a lynx spider species, as it is shown in this work, offers a strong support to ...

To investigate the peculiar absence of phospholipases A(2) (PLA(2)s) in most Crotalus horridus (CH) venom, we cloned and sequenced the venom PLA(2)s of three CH specimens from different regions. The results revealed that all the venom glands contained mRNAs that encoded an acidic PLA(2) (designated as either CH-E6 or CH-E6'). ...

An acidic protein with phospholipase A(2) activity was purified to homogeneity from the venom of the Northeast Argentinian viperid Bothrops alternatus by two chromatographic steps: a conventional gel filtration on Sephadex G-75 and reversed phase on C18 HPLC column. A molecular mass of 14185.48 Da was determined by mass spectrometry, ...

Ahpfibrase was a new snake venom metalloproteinase (SVMP) which was cloned from Gloydius halys. The cDNA sequence with 1,891 base pairs encodes an open reading frame of 477 amino acids which includes a 17 amino acid signal peptide, plus a 171 amino acid segment of zymogen-like propeptide, a metalloproteinase domain ...

In this study, the possible influence of acidic, basic, and amide side chains on the opening of a putative macrocyclic b ion (b(5)(+)) intermediate was investigated. Collision induced dissociation (CID) of b(5) ions was studied using a group of hexapeptides in which amino acids with the side chains of interest ...

We investigated the amino acid sequences of rat PERIOD2 (rPER2) that are required for interaction with CRYPTOCHROME1 (CRY1) to understand the molecular mechanism of the circadian clock. Co-immunoprecipitation assays using various C-terminal fragments of rPER2 with internal deletions revealed that amino acid residues 1179-1198 are necessary for interaction with CRY1. ...

A widespread, severe outbreak of canine distemper encephalitis was observed in wildlife in Southern Bavaria in the spring and summer of 2008. The haemagglutinin (HA) genes of six representative canine distemper virus (CDV) samples originating from five red foxes and one badger during this outbreak had a Y549H amino acid ...

In alignments of 1969 protein sequences the amino acid glycine and others were found concentrated at most-conserved sites within approximately 15 A of catalytic/active centers (C/AC) of highly conserved kinases, dehydrogenases or lyases of Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota. Lysine and glutamic acid were concentrated at least-conserved sites furthest from their ...

Research on citrus fruit ripening has received considerable attention because of the importance of citrus fruits for the human diet. Organic acids are among the main determinants of taste and organoleptic quality of fruits and hence the control of fruit acidity loss has a strong economical relevance. In citrus, organic ...

BACKGROUND: We previously reported that cynomolgus monkey (CM) TRIM5α could restrict human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) strains carrying a proline at the 120th position of the capsid protein (CA), but it failed to restrict those with a glutamine or an alanine. In contrast, rhesus monkey (Rh) TRIM5α could restrict ...

The full-length cDNA sequence of canine excitatory amino acid transporter (EAAT) 5 was determined in samples taken from the canine retina. The sequence was 2,467 bp long and was predicted to encode the 560 amino acid polypeptides. The deduced amino acid sequence of canine EAAT5 showed similarities of 91.8 and ...

Oligonucleotide-mediated mutagenesis is a useful tool for engineering nucleotide changes at defined positions in a DNA sequence. Oligonucleotide-based approaches are commonly used to introduce missense mutations at individual codons in a gene or gene segment, thereby revealing the functional importance of specific amino acid residues in a protein. For mutagenesis ...

A novel pectin was acid extracted from chickpea husk (CHP). CHP presented a 67% (w/w) of galacturonic acid, an intrinsic viscosity of 374 mL/g and a viscosimetric molecular weight of 110 kDa. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy spectrum of CHP indicated a degree of esterification of about 10%. The CHP-calcium system ...

Pirh2 is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that promotes tumor suppressor p53 ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation. Recently, we have reported the identification and characterization of two novel isoforms of Pirh2 named Pirh2B and Pirh2C and accordingly, reclassified the full-length Pirh2 as Pirh2A. Both Pirh2B and C negatively regulate p53 and also ...

Sequence comparisons make use of a one-letter representation for amino acids, the necessary quantitative information being supplied by the substitution matrices. This paper deals with the problem of finding a representation that provides a comprehensive description of amino acid intrinsic properties consistent with the substitution matrices. We present a Euclidian ...

A nuclease was purified from the fruit body of Tricholoma matsutake. The molecular mass was 38 kDa. The optimum pH of the nuclease was about 8.0. Its activity was inhibited by GTP. The nuclease cleaved RNA and heat-denatured DNA endonucleolytically to produce 5'-mononucleotide, and showed 3'-nucleotidase activity. The amino acid ...

String kernels are commonly used for the classification of biological sequences, nucleotide as well as amino acid sequences. Although string kernels are already very powerful, when it comes to amino acids they have a major short coming. They ignore an important piece of information when comparing amino acids: the physico-chemical ...

BACKGROUND: The amino acid substitution model is the core component of many protein analysis systems such as sequence similarity search, sequence alignment, and phylogenetic inference. Although several general amino acid substitution models have been estimated from large and diverse protein databases, they remain inappropriate for analyzing specific species, e.g., viruses. ...

A new oleanane-type triterpenoid saponin, named platycoside N (1), together with six known saponins, was isolated from the roots of Platycodon grandiflorum. On the basis of acid hydrolysis, comprehensive spectroscopic data analyses and comparison with the spectral data of the known compounds, its structure was elucidated as 3-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→6)-β-D-glucopyranosyl-2β,3β,16α,23-tetrahydroxyolean-12-en-28-oic acid 28-O-β-L-rhamnopyranosyl-(1→2)-α-L-arabinopyranoside. ...

We found that Corynebacterium glutamicum ATCC 13032::argF extracellularly produced a large amount of D-ornithine when cultivated in a CGXII medium containing 1 mM L-arginine. This is the first report that C. glutamicum ATCC 13032 or its mutant produces a D-amino acid extracellularly. C. glutamicum ATCC 13032::argF produced 13 mM D-ornithine ...

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DRB1*1615 shows one amino acid replacement at codon 86 (G>V) regarding DRB1*160101.

Phospholipases A(2) (PLA(2)) are major components of snake venoms, exerting a variety of relevant toxic actions such as neurotoxicity and myotoxicity, among others. Since the majority of toxic PLA(2)s are basic proteins, acidic isoforms and their possible roles in venoms are less understood. In this study, an acidic enzyme (BaspPLA(2)-II) ...

CREBZF (also called ZF or Zhangfei) is a basic region-leucine zipper transcription factor that has been implicated in the herpesvirus infection cycle and related cellular processes. Since ATF4 is known to play a key role in cellular responses to various ER stresses as well as amino acid deprivation, we sought ...

Nuclear localization signals (NLSs) are amino acid sequences that target cargo proteins into the nucleus. Rigorous characterization of NLS motifs is essential to understanding and predicting pathways for nuclear import. The best-characterized NLS is the classical NLS (cNLS), which is recognized by the cNLS receptor, importin-alpha. cNLSs are conventionally defined ...

Peropsin, a member of the opsin family, has characteristics of two functionally distinct opsin-groups, that is, amino acid residues conserved among opsins for light-sensing and a retinal-photoisomerase-like molecular property. Although such a bilateral feature of peropsin seems to be important for understanding the diversity of the opsin family, previous studies ...

There are at least three different pathways for the catabolism of D-galacturonate in microorganisms. In the oxidative pathway, which was described in some prokaryotic species, D-galacturonate is first oxidised to meso-galactarate (mucate) by a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD)-dependent dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.203). In the following steps of the pathway mucate is ...

Bacteriocins produced by lactic acid bacteria showing stability even in neutral and weak alkaline pH were screened, and a new bacteriocin produced by Lactobacillus plantarum A-1, plantaricin ASM1 (PASM1) was purified and characterized. This bacteriocin which is heat-stable but digested by trypsin inhibits the growth of lactic acid bacterial species, ...

An acid-promoted glycosylation and alkynol cycloisomerization sequence provided direct access to the 2-deoxytrisaccharide corresponding to the fucose-saccharosamine-digitoxose substructure of saccharomicin B. In the course of this work, the absolute stereochemistry of the repeating fucose-saccharosamine disaccharide of saccharomicins was also confirmed.

A gene encoding glucansucrase was identified in Leuconostoc lactis EG001 isolated from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in Kimchi, a traditional Korean fermented food. The L. lactis EG001 glucansucrase gene consists of 4503 bp open reading frame (ORF) and encodes an enzyme of 1500 amino acids with an apparent molecular mass ...

Ghrelin is an endogenous ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue receptor. It plays an important role in stimulating growth hormone secretion, food intake, body weight gain and gastric motility. cDNA sequences coding for ghrelin precursor protein (prepro-ghrelin) were isolated from the stomach of a giant panda. Two different mRNA sequences ...