peptide

Neuronal 'traffic jam' marks early Alzheimer's disease

... to form an aberrant form of amyloid beta (A-beta) peptide that makes up the plaques that surround the neuron...red to have an abnormal production of human A-beta peptide that produced Alzheimer's-like plaques and subsequent neural degeneration. The scientists' analyses...

Research advances quest for HIV-1 vaccine

...f the complex formed by association of 4E10 with a peptide fragment that is identical to the section of gp41 that the antibody recognizes. The researchers identified the specific amino acids on gp41 that 4E10 interacts with and the 3D structure adopted by these amino acids. These study results suggest that 4...

Pathogen-Mimicking Vaccine As Strategy For Cancer Therapy

...CpG 7909 (ProMuneTM, Coley Pharmaceutical), with a peptide antigen were reported today in the Journal of Clin.... "The immune system mounts a response against the peptide antigen, the cancer-specific target, in the vaccine, and thus also against the antigen on the cancer...

50-year-old Mystery Solved: Protein Tags Regulate Key Ion Channel

...how cells control ion channel function: reversible peptide linkage." Ion channels are in every cell in the h...shun]. In this process, an enzyme attaches a small peptide called SUMO (for small ubiquitin-like modifier protein) onto another protein. The presence of SUMO a...

Researchers make gains in understanding antibiotic resistance

...tunnel" in the ribosome, through which the growing peptide chain moves during synthesis. This tunnel is normally blocked by macrolide antibiotics. In the mutant form, the tunnel widens, which may explain why macrolide antibiotics are no longer effective. According to Steitz, insights about the ribosomal ori...

New understanding of DNA repair may pave way to cancer treatments

...id. Consequently, his laboratory developed a small peptide that interferes with ATF2 function, efficiently bl...ctions and to allow for further development of the peptide toward clinical assessment. "Until our recent studies, we were certain that the mechanism by which ...

Engineers improve plastic's potential for use in implants by linking it to biological material

...nts Archit Sanghvi and Kiley Miller identified the peptide that attaches to polypyrrole from among the billio...ess that was repeated four more times. The sticky peptide selected, known as T59, is a string of 12 amino acids. To make certain that something else on the ou...

Innovative coating could give medical implants a longer life

... up of two parts, both playing a key role: a short peptide that is the synthetic version of the sticky dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) molecule that gives mussels their adhesive or anchoring strength and a longer peptoid polymer resembling the structure of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a widely studied antifoulin...

Tamoxifen-like drug suggests new ways to selectively block estrogen

... pushes one small part of the estrogen receptor, a peptide spiral called helix 12, out of place. By shifting helix 12 to an odd spot, GW5638 disrupts the ways in which several other molecules that normally interact with the estrogen receptor go about their jobs. These molecules, called coactivators or corep...

Gene silencing technique offers new strategy for treating, curing disease

...irst, they developed a synthetic molecule called a peptide nucleic acid, or PNA, which physically binds to DNA and blocks enzymes from copying, or transcribing, the DNA into messenger RNA. More importantly, the researchers also employed RNA itself as a silencing agent. Previous work by other scientists had ...

Discovery could be key to bioterrorism defense

...ion by Paramyxoviruses," covers the use of a novel peptide sequence of the soluble F glycoprotein, to block fusion of the virus with the host cell. This peptide can be used as a prophylactic, and/or to treat infections, and antibodies developed using this pepti...

Researchers discover stem cell 'guide' that may be key for targeting neural stem cell treatments

...to a particular brain region. The protein, a small peptide called prokineticin 2 (PK2), was found to play a key regulatory role for the proper functional integration of these new neurons in the brain. A few years ago, PK2 was shown by the same research group to be an important regulator of circadian rhythms....

Achilles heel of the herpes virus possibly found

...e pig cells by adding to cell cultures a synthetic peptide made to mimic the structure of a smaller region of the B5 receptor. This peptide looks like a functional region of B5 and apparently interferes with virus engaging of the cell recep...

Researchers develop new method for facile identification of proteins in bacterial cells

... cell extracts of microorganisms using traditional peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF). The key to the new method, according to the researchers, is a "shortcut" for preparing samples that makes PMF faster and more economical. By reducing the cost of protein identification, they believe PMF can become an econom...

Pinpointing a culprit molecule in Alzheimer's disease

...clipped by enzymes, produces the amyloid beta (Ab) peptide that clusters into the amyloid plaque that clogs t...help address, wrote the researchers, is whether Ab peptide does damage inside brain cells or outside--"intracellularly." Transgenic mice produced by other rese...

University of Nevada, Reno research team discovers hormone that causes malaria mosquito to urinate

...nsects at any stage of development may be found in peptide hormones, small proteins in all animals that regul...Synthetic compounds that mimic the action of these peptide hormones should be useful as pesticides," Schooley said. "Like methoprene, DH31 only affects lower s...

A new molecule discovered in the battle between plants and disease

...istry, Washington State University Title: A novel peptide signal, AtPep1, regulates pathogen defense in Arabidopsis AtPep1 is a 23 amino acid peptide that was isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana (G. Pearce, A. Huffaker, C.A. Ryan, submitted). The pept...

Bitter or sweet? The same taste bud can tell the difference

...lls that contain both NPY and CCK and see how each peptide reacts. Herness conducted the study with Fang-li Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in dentistry at Ohio State; Yu Cao, a graduate student in neuroscience also at Ohio State; and Tiansheng Shen and Namik Kaya, both with the University of Maryland. ...

Gene therapy to lower blood pressure just enough

...well." The gene in question -- atrial natriuretic peptide or ANP -- promises to control blood pressure through a variety of effects on key areas involved in the problem of hypertension, including the relaxation of smooth muscle cells in blood vessels, increasing the vessels' diameters, and reducing the man...

Bacteria recognize antimicrobials, respond with counter-defenses

... whereby bacteria can recognize tiny antimicrobial peptide molecules, then respond by becoming more virulent....r near the surface of bacteria cell membranes. The peptide binding activates PhoQ, which sets off a cascade of signals. The signals turn on a large set of bact...

Molecular miners find pain relief drugs from the sea

...tic mining technique that ACV1 was discovered ?its peptide sequence was predicted solely from the DNA sequence. The peptide was then chemically synthesised in large quantities suitable for biological testing. This same appro...

Opiate cocktail may spare cells from morphine's dark side

...zed protein on the surface of cells, the mu opioid peptide receptor, or "MOP" receptor. MOP receptors are also activated by other opioid drugs and by endogenous opioids, such as endorphins. However, morphine is unique in that unlike other opioids, it does not cause the MOP receptor to be internalized into th...

Nanotubes inspire new technique for healing broken bones

...m a wide variety of materials, such as polymers or peptide fibers, but they have a number of drawbacks, including low strength and the potential for rejection in the body. "Compared with these scaffolds, the high mechanical strength, excellent flexibility and low density of carbon nanotubes make them ideal ...

How HIV disables the cells' call for help

... of the immune cell's system. They investigated a peptide fragment called FP (fusion peptide), a segment of ...rhaps," says Cohen, "we humans can adopt the virus peptide to better control overactive autoimmunity." Prof. Irun Cohen's research is supported by the Minna J...

Vaginal gel may provide a new approach to HIV prevention

...m tested gels containing two small molecules and a peptide -- alone and in combination --designed to block SHIV from fusing with its target cells at or near the tissue lining of the vagina, to see whether this would prevent the virus from entering the monkeys' bodies. The test compounds were provided by Bri...

'Smart' nanoprobes light up disease

...quantum dot to inhibit luminescence. The tether, a peptide sequence measuring only a few nanometers, or billi...light. In their test system, the Rice team used a peptide tether that is cleaved by the enzyme collagenase. The researchers first showed that luminescence of ...

Grabbing addiction by the tail

...rchers have sidestepped this problem by crafting a peptide that mimics a portion of the tail of the glutamate...se questions. The researchers began by building a peptide ?a long molecule made from a string of amino acids ?with a structure similar to the tail of the glut...

Nanoparticles, nanoshells, nanotubes: How tiny specks may provide powerful tools against cancer

...oparticle combined with a hormone and cell-killing peptide is being tested to image, target and destroy prima...esearchers have combined a hormone, a cell-killing peptide and nanoparticles to both target and kill breast cancer cells. The scientists, led by Carola Leusc...

Gene controls whether fear is a factor

... that the amygdala-enriched gene gastrin-releasing peptide selectively affects learned fear, the new findings support the clinical data suggesting that anxiety is a spectrum of disorders with multiple subclasses, each of which may have a unique molecular signature requiring distinctive approaches to therapy,...

New peptide antibiotic isolated from American oyster

...Carolina Sea Grant researchers have isolated a new peptide antibiotic from the American oyster that may have ...g many diseases in oysters. The new antimicrobial peptide "American oyster defensin" (AOD) may protect against bacteria in Crassostrea virginica, a species th...

A real time look at interactions between RNA and proteins

...ide a live cell. One end of the molecule, called a peptide nucleic acid (PNA), has a cell-penetrating peptide called transportan 10 to first get the PNA through the cell membrane. Once in the cell, the PNA bind...

Newly identified mechanism helps explain why people of African descent are more vulnerable to TB

...s the cleavage of a preexistent protein to a small peptide called cathelicidin, which can kill TB bacilli in the test tube. One of the interesting aspects of this mechanism is that production of vitamin D in humans is dependent on exposure to UV light, generally sunlight, and may not have evolved in mice s...

Melanoma vaccine strategy shows promise in laboratory experiments

...tudy, the scientists used a small protein called a peptide found in approximately 70 percent of melanomas, bu...BRAFV600E peptide. Combining the prevalence of the peptide among melanoma patients ?about 70 percent ?with the number of patients whose immune cells are able t...

How the brain learns to become addicted

... of intoxication, that addicts seek treatment, the peptide signaling pathways for orexin and CRF may prove to be fruitful targets in the search for addiction medications." Bonci and his colleagues based their experiments on past studies by other researchers showing that orexins are important regulatory pept...

Scientists one step closer to cancer vaccine

... defence. The researchers have identified a short peptide molecule that the T cell in the study recognises. Using this peptide, the researchers can vaccinate and protect against the spread of tumours from different tissues, including melanoma, colon cancer, lymphoma, and fibrosarcoma. "So far we've only co...

Genomics-based vaccine could prevent deadly cattle disease

...r genes that make a "secretion signal," a telltale peptide sequence found at the start of secreted proteins. Sure enough, the scientists found some 400 T. parva genes containing the secretion signal. This set of genes provided a starting pool of candidate proteins. Based on further tests, the study's resea...

Protein finding could lead to treatment for inflammatory diseases

...tons) can be reduced to smaller, activity-specific peptide regions. Doing so would simplify the preparation of a topical treatment that would inhibit painful inflammatory responses. The molluscum contagiosum virus that produces MC160 is a distant relative of smallpox and causes a benign, short-lived skin in...

How nice, brown rice: Study shows rice bran lowers blood pressure in rats

...Vitamin E, markedly lowered the rats?levels of the peptide 8-OHdG. “Oxidative stress plays an important role in the initiation and progression of cardiovascular diseases,?explained lead author Ardiansyah [ editor note: name is correct as written, there is no first name ], a Ph.D. candidate at the university...

New protein target may advance design of HIV and cancer drugs

...platinum drug with higher affinity for the protein peptide backbone, thus eliminating the zinc from its active site. In the specific case discussed in the paper, the HIV NCp7 protein is responsible for the proliferation of the HIV virus. If researchers can inhibit the action of this zinc finger protein, the...

Tramiprosate (Alzhemed? preclinical results published in Neurobiology of Aging

...sion of the article entitled "Targeting soluble Aβ peptide with Tramiprosate for the treatment of brain amylo...sate (Alzhemed? binds preferentially to soluble Aβ peptide and maintains Aβ in a non-fibrillar form. Tramiprosate (Alzhemed? decreases by 38% (p-value Trami...

Production of key Alzheimer's protein monitored for first time in humans

...the production and clearance rates of amyloid beta peptide (Abeta) in the human central nervous system. According to the authors, the new testing process opens a valuable window into the genesis of Alzheimer's disease that, in addition to helping scientists better understand the origins of the condition, wil...

The molecular mechanism of a diabetes vaccine revealed

...r even only a small particular fragment of it ?the peptide designated p277 ?is able to shut down the autoimmu... of the immune system in two ways. First, the p277 peptide steps up the activities of a different type of T cell that regulates the amount of potentially harmf...

Defense peptide found in primates may block some human HIV transmissions

...ops only weak resistance to retrocyclin, a defense peptide still found in monkeys and lower primates. If additional laboratory tests demonstrate only weak resistance, Cole will study how retrocyclin could be developed into a drug designed to prevent the HIV virus from entering human cells. Cole is also w...

A sweet solution for Alzheimer's disease?

.... It's not completely clear what kind of amyloid â peptide (monomers, oligomeric aggregates, or fibrillar aggregates) is responsible for the onset of disease, said St George-Hyslop of the University of Toronto. "Because we were able to show that scyllo-inositol specifically dispersed the high-molecular-weigh...

New angiogenesis finding may help fight cancer growth

...es awry, Bresnick says. "We have discovered a new peptide that clearly suppresses angiogenesis via a novel multi-component mechanism," he says. "A key question is whether we can exploit it to develop therapeutics."...

Solved: The mystery of flesh-eating bacteria's relentless attack

...n. They focused on the gene for a Streptococcus peptide called SilCR, after finding that the gene product ...he M14 strain. "This gene is supposed to produce a peptide that acts as a signaling molecule that the Streptococcus bacteria use to communicate with each other...

Immune cell communication key to hunting viruses, Jefferson immunologists show

...that carried the same MHC protein with a different peptide not recognized by the T- cells ?unexpectedly also ... "We always suspected that recognition of other peptide MHCs, like self-peptide MHCs derived from normal proteins, could facilitate recognition, but it was ...

Scientists identify 36 genes, 100 neuropeptides in honey bee brains

...you find a gene, it is hard to say what particular peptide it will create, because neuropeptide precursors undergo extensive post-translational processing." Some of the neuropeptides the researchers discovered were a result of direct measurements of bee brains using an extremely sensitive mass spectrometer...

Motorola researchers develop selective sensors based on carbon nanotubes

...the heavy metal tests, the researchers developed a peptide to detect nickel and one to detect copper. If the nickel peptide were used, it would only detect the presence of nickel and be "blind" to any other heavy metal ion (...

An artificial cornea is in sight, thanks to biomimetic hydrogels

...lial adhesion to the material. Michael Carrasco, a peptide chemist at Santa Clara University, consulted about surface modifications for cellular adhesion. The researchers are now testing the material for biocompatibility in animal models. Animals have tolerated artificial corneas with no problems in trials...

Protein splicing upsets the DNA colinearity paradigm

...eam has found that proteasomes can also splice the peptide fragments together in a reverse order to that enco...protein, and therefore widens the applicability of peptide vaccines against cancer and infectious diseases....

New drug blocks influenza, including bird flu virus

... Journal of Virology, describes the discovery of a peptide -- a small protein molecule -- that effectively bl...enting the release of viruses from the cell. The peptide found by the Wisconsin group seems to work in an entirely different way. "It attacks a completely ...

Eating protein boosts hormone that staves off hunger

...sm, published by Cell Press. The hormone, known as peptide YY (PYY), was earlier found by the researchers to reduce food intake by a third in both normal-weight and obese people when given by injection. "We've now found that increasing the protein content of the diet augments the body's own PYY, helping to...

Tearing down the fungal cell wall

...lism, commented: "The finding that a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase is integral to conidial morphology furt...e encodes a large protein known as a non-ribosomal peptide synthetase. This protein directs the synthesis of secondary metabolites known as non-ribosomal pepti...

Proteins may predict lung transplant rejection

...had found that elevated levels of human neutrophil peptide (HNP), declining Clara cell secretory protein and some previously unidentified proteins were highly correlated with chronic lung rejection. In particular, the researchers found that HNP was three times more likely to be elevated among those who later...

Encouraging results in pancreatic cancer research

... a control peptide." Dr. Pincus added that this peptide and its parent peptide, called PNC-27, are lethal to a wide variety of human cancer cells, besides pancreatic cancer, including colon, breast, cervical and bone (osteogenic sarcoma) cancers. These peptides kill cancer cells that do not even contain n...

Decoy pill saves brain cells

... researchers injected laboratory mice with a decoy peptide containing a snippet of a receptor that facilitate...I was surprised that this works. It looks like the peptide is almost completely neuroprotective." Baudry, one of USC’s most frequently cited researchers, ha...

Does a peptide affect the heart's response to social isolation?

...searchers investigating the effects of oxytocin, a peptide produced by the brain that regulates social behavior, has found that it can prevent detrimental cardiac responses in adult female animals exposed to social isolation. The findings may provide further insight into how these mechanisms affect humans. ...

Inhibiting blood to save the brain

...chool of Medicine have identified a fibrin-derived peptide that inhibits this specific inflammation process i...er the first episode of paralysis using the fibrin peptide prevented subsequent relapses. It also prevented further microglia activation and damage to myelin ...

Discovery of an HIV inhibitor in human blood points to new drug class

...nary evidence showing that some derivatives of the peptide are highly stable in human blood plasma and are no... the active ingredient. A synthetic version of the peptide maintained its anti-HIV activity, excluding the possibility that some other factor was responsible. ...