Motif in Biological News

Scientists reveal the key mechanisms for affinity between transient binding proteins

... surface of another proteins, the so-called lineal motif or peptide. The difficulty lies in the fact that ... that are found in nearby regions of the lineal motif but do not form part of it. "The binding strength ... is determined by contacts found in the lineal motif but it is the contextual residues that hold ...

Protein that promotes cancer cell growth identified

... division and invasion. The researchers also identified an RXDLL amino acid motif that controls the signaling from the EGF receptor through the protein ... wildtype Caspase-8. Sequence homology studies helped to identify a RXDLL motif in the protein, a sequence that has been shown in other proteins to ...

'Disordered' amino acids may really be there to provide wiggle room for signaling protein

... to serve as a signaling adaptor, an important link between different proteins in a pathway. Oddly, researchers have noted that the ezrin-binding motif conveniently fits into a cleft on the surface of the PDZ domains, but assumes a helical structure, which is highly unusual for this class of ....

New polymer coatings prevent corrosion, even when scratched

... offers a general approach to self-healing coatings that operates across a broad spectrum of coating chemistries," Braun said. "The microcapsule motif also provides a delivery mechanism for corrosion inhibitors, antimicrobial agents, and other functional chemicals." ...

Researchers discover the structural alphabet of RNA

... that are found in known structures. "We introduced a new first-order object to represent nucleotide relationships, the nucleotide cyclic motif (NCM). We reasoned that using NCMs could allow us to arrive at better models of the 3D structure of RNA molecules, " explains Franois Major. ...

Pathogens use previously undescribed mechanism to sabotage host immune system

... innate immune responses and are frequent targets of pathogenic effectors in both plants and animal systems. All MAPKs contain a threonine -X-tyrosine motif and require phosphorylation of both threonine and tyrosine for activation. Previous work demonstrated that members of the OspF family, including OspF ...

Relationship between environmental stress and cancer elucidated

... whether or not SIRT1 is of benefit. Dr. Yang may have found one reason: mice SIRT1 doesnt contain sumoylation motif. When he created sumoylation motif in mice, SIRT1 activity went up. Dr. Yang will do follow up studies to see if these mice live longer but says SIRT1 may simply have a different ...

Researchers discover new strategies for antibiotic resistance

... high rates of mutation or modification at specific sites within these molecules. To do so, the y core structure often contains a "b bulge" motif a region that affords structural variations otherwise prohibited in protein biochemistry. "The ability of host defense molecules to change so ...

Evolution mystery: Spider venom and bacteria share same toxin

... Cordes and Binford found a common structural motif at the end of both toxic proteins that is not ... "Understanding the importance of this structural motif in the toxic activity may help with developing ... of brown recluse and their relatives. If this motif is central to protein function, treatments ...

Scientists reveal molecular secrets of the malaria parasite

... at the transition between the vertebrate host and the mosquito. That motif regulates proteins that are switched on as the parasite enters the ... of transcripts from these genes. Hall says that gene-regulation motif "is particularly interesting because these proteins, expressed early in ...

Exploring the molecular origin of blood clot flexibility

... change by pulling engineered strands of fibrinogen molecules using an atomic force microscope. This alpha-helical coiled-coil "spring" is a common motif in protein structure, first identified more than 50 years ago and so its stretchiness may have broader implications in biology and medicine. By ...

Small molecule dervived from Rb2/p130 could act as cancer therapeutic

... produce the same functionality as p21, explained Giordano. "We thought we could narrow down the spacer region that contains the protein-like motif to a small portion that could be delivered as a small molecule or peptide," Giordano said. They discovered a 39 amino-acid-long sequence, which ...

An AIDS-related virus tricks cells to become tumors, new Penn study finds

... Ubiquitylation and degradation involve a complex set of proteins in addition to ubiquitin. "We found that the viral LANA has an amino acid motif that mimics non-viral cell proteins usually involved in the ubiquitylation process," says Robertson. This motif, or stretch of amino acids, normally ...

MIT creates 3-D scaffold for growing stem cells

... microenvironments may play a more important role for cell survival and for carrying out cell functions than previously thought." The active motif method could be readily adapted to studying cell-to-cell interaction, cell migrations, tumor and cancer cell interaction with normal cells, ...

Many needles, many haystacks

... experiments in collaboration with Luis Serrano's group at EMBL to test some of the others." One prediction, for example, suggested that a linear motif would bind to the fly protein translin. The scientists verified that this happened, then they made subtle changes in the sequence. When these changes ...

Researchers find new genes necessary to make embryo

... in different individuals. "The results from the analyses of genes showing partial penetrance suggest the possibility of a general architectural motif in genetic networks," said Fabio Piano, an NYU biologist and lead author of the study, "in which genes in critical positions consist largely of older ...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

... R. Burton, and Ian A. Wilson: "Broadly Neutralizing Anti-HIV Antibody 4E10 Recognizes a Helical Conformation of a Highly Conserved Fusion-Associated motif in gp41" Publishing in Immunity, Volume 22, Number 2, February 2005, pages 163?73. http://www.immunity.com/ ...

New binding target for oncogenic viral protein

... Clurman. "When Fbw7 is mutated in cancers, deregulation of these oncogenic Fbw7 targets is thought to contribute to cancer. SV40 T antigen contains a motif that mimics the destruction signal found in these proteins." However, unlike the other substrates recognized by Fbw7, T antigen is not destroyed by ...

Viral DNA sequence a possible trigger for breast cancer

... cells into cancer cells, according to a study by Katz et al. in the February 7 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine. The ability of this motif to transform cells single-handedly suggests that viral infection may be an important and previously unrecognized trigger for breast cancer. The DNA ...