Peptides in Biological News

U Alberta researcher in same group as Darwin and Hawking

... that centers on the identification of antibiotic peptides in bacteria. Antibiotic peptides play an important role in food preservation and ... such as combating hospital-acquired infections. peptides are 1,000 to 1 million times more active than ...

Scientists develop method for comprehensive proteome analysis

... into smaller peptides, then separation of the peptides based on electrostatic charge using strong anionic exchange chromatography. The peptides were further separated by molecular weight using ... liquid chromatography. Each of the individual peptides was detected and identified using mass ...

Scripps research team identifies key molecules that inhibit viral production

... new study, Strosberg and his colleagues describe peptides (molecules of two or more amino acids) derived ... protein of hepatitis C. The team found that these peptides inhibit not only dimerization of the core protein ... research, however, led to the discovery of two peptides that inhibited HCV production by 68 percent and ...

Peptides-on-demand: McGill researcher's radical new green chemistry makes the impossible possible

... discovered an entirely new way of synthesizing peptides using simple reagents, a process that would be ... of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), peptides are short oligomer and polymer substances made up ... themselves composed of longer chains of peptides. peptides are enormously important to biological and ...

Texas Medical Center researchers win collaborative grants

... treatments. Yang and Barron explained that peptides small strings of amino acids are unable to ... their research will be to see if such fullerene peptides can block the growth of cancer cells in mice. "Hopefully, we can establish the fullerene peptides as a type of therapeutic agent to cure ...

Discovery of natural compounds that could slow blood vessel growth

... growth." To identify short protein fragments peptides that can block blood vessel growth, the team started by looking at 40 known peptides that have been studied and characterized by other ... assumption that the antivessel activity of these peptides can be attributed to similar features that are ...

Chemists make beds with soft landings

... onto a waiting surface. The small proteins called peptides are of a variety that normally take the shape of ... Laskin and Peng Wang delivered ultra-pure helical peptides to the surface and trapped them there, they ... Chemie. "Controlling the conformation of peptides is not easy," said Laskin. "Our previous studies ...

Scientists overcome nanotech hurdle

... to examine tiny protein molecules called peptides on the surface of a gold nanoparticle. This is ... to build a detailed picture of self-assembled peptides on a nanoparticle and it offers the promise of ... blocks through initiating self-assembly of peptides on the surface of a metal nanoparticle. Whilst ...

UC San Diego researchers eliminate drug discovery bottleneck

... the time it takes to determine the structure of peptides derived from natural compounds from six months or ... a class of natural compounds called nonribosomal peptides (NRPs) that are intensely studied for their drug ... products, the authors say. Nonribosomal peptides evolved over millions of years and often serve ...

Researchers reveal HIV peptide's possible pathway into the cell

... said. The researchers' model systems show the peptides grabbing for surrounding negative charges, but ... to their greedy peptide neighbors, some of the peptides reach into the cell membrane and grab negative ... and other material into the cell. Once all the peptides have been neutralized, the reaction stops and the ...

Drug aimed at 2 bioterror agents blocks live viral infection, Weill Cornell team reports

... effective at inhibiting Hendra virus fusion than peptides derived from the Hendra virus itself," Dr. ... of biochemistry at Weill Cornell. "These peptides act like door jambs -- their particular shapes ... they've learned to design even more effective peptides that should work even better. "However, one ...

Paradigm shift in Alzheimers's research: new treatments

... proteases responsible for generating A". Ragged peptides with a major species beginning with phenylalanine ... A"N3(pE) represents a dominant fraction of A" peptides in AD and Downs syndrome brain3-15. ... in general enhance aggregation of "-amyloid peptides in vitro16. A"N3(pE) has a higher aggregation ...

Common gene variants increase risk of hypertension, may lead to new therapies

... NPPB that are involved in the production of atrial and B-type natriuretic peptides (ANP and BNP) proteins known to relax blood vessels and to be involved in ... less pronounced effect on ANP levels and blood pressure. "Natriuretic peptides are known to be produced by the heart when it is stressed, and screening ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Jan. 28, 2009

... content. Using a newly developed method, they identified a group of 17 peptides (building blocks of proteins) that appear to be directly associated with CAD. These urine-based peptides indicated the presence of the disease with an 84 percent accuracy rate ...

New technology for boosting vaccine efficiency

... which present a viral protein to the immune system. One requires peptides derived from the antigen protein, while the other presents the entire ... response, we have to combine two forms of a protein: one chopped into many peptides and optimal for the first mechanism, and the other resistant to chopping ...

Using carbon nanotubes to seek and destroy anthrax toxin and other harmful proteins

... deactivating anthrax toxin and other proteins. By attaching peptides to carbon nanotubes, we gave them the ability to selectively recognize a ... targeted destruction of tumor cells. By conjugating carbon nanotubes with peptides engineered to seek out specific cancer cells, and then releasing those ...

Alzheimer's disease drug treats traumatic brain injury, report GUMC researchers

... nerve cells after traumatic brain injury. This secondary injury can last months, if not years, resulting in large holes within brain tissue. Amyloid peptides are produced when a long brain protein known as the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is cut in two by the enzyme beta secretase, and then cut once ...

Tips from the journals of the American Society for Microbiology

... defense system shared by all animals, activates when the body responds to foreign pathogens at an early stage of infection. Cationic antimicrobial peptides (known for their antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, antiprotozoal and antiseptic properties) are part of the innate immune response which kills ...

American Society for Microbiology honors George Liu

... of the mechanism of immunologic tolerance in a model of autoimmunity. His novel concept that the low affinity of certain autoantigenic peptides could provide a basis for the existence of autoreactive T cells in humanshad an impact on the field of autoimmunity. Dr. Liu's research ...

Comprehensive genetic study paves way for new blood-pressure medicines

... role in the biosynthesis of glucorticoid hormones, which influence the metabolism of salt. In another area on chromosome 1p36 there are genes for two peptides with natrium-expelling effects. A lesser-known gene in this area, CLCN6, codes for a chloride canal in the neurons, which was not previously ...

Regulation of cell proliferation by the OGF-OGFr axis is dependent on nuclear localization signals

... identified OGF as the specific peptide, cloned and sequenced OGFr, and collaborated on demonstrating the remarkable properties of these native peptides in a variety of clinical studies. OGF has proven successful in a Phase I clinical, trial, and Phase II trials for pancreatic cancer and squamous ...

HIV pays a price for invisibility

... proceed to clinical illness. This study suggests that vaccines should be designed to produce a T cell response against a number of different viral peptides something that experimental human vaccines so far have yet to achieve. ...

American Chemical Society Weekly PressPac -- April 8, 2009

... laboratory mice, the researchers compared the extent of phosphorylation in both capacitated and noncapacitated sperm samples. They identified 44 peptides exhibiting differential phosphorylation, on 59 specific amino acids, suggesting that modification of these particular sites is essential for the ...

Alzheimer's disease therapeutic prevents long-term damage from TBI in pre-clinical studies

... or treat this damage, he says. In this study, the investigators sought to understand if amyloid peptide contributed to secondary injury. Amyloid peptides are produced when a long protein in the brain known as the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is cut in two by the enzyme beta secretase, and then cut ...

MIT student develops new innovations to selectively kill cancer cells

... paradigm for improving drug delivery, including: a low-cost method for hemorrhage detection; a new class of 'self-assembling' lipid-like peptides with promising applications in gene therapy; sensors for detecting tumor protease hot-spots in MRI; a method for remotely-controlling drug release ...

How Toxoplasma gondii gets noticed

... understood. Like many other parasites, T. gondii resides within specialized vesicles inside infected host cells, but the process by which peptides from the trapped bugs are processed by infected cells and presented to killer T cells is mysterious. Here, Romina Goldszmid and her colleagues ...

Brain enzyme may play key role in controlling appetite and weight gain

... nutrient-sensing nerve cells. "When we raised the activity of the enzyme, we saw reductions in food intake, in body weight, and in production of peptides [small chains of amino acids] that normally stimulate feeding," says Dr. Schwartz. "When we lowered S6K activity, we saw essentially the opposite ...

Computation and genomics data drive bacterial research into new golden age

... that the process by which the Rhizobium bacteria in legume root nodules adapt to their nitrogen fixing role is induced, at least in part, by small peptides (proteins) made by the plant which target the bacteria in the nodule. The ESF conference also highlighted the benefits of cross fertilisation ...

Cancer cell 'bodyguard' turned into killer

... so it injures a cell rather than merely disables it "is very unusual." He added that this finding would spur researchers to develop drugs or stable peptides that act on Bcl-2 at the Nur77 binding site. "Quite conceivably, individual cancers may respond better to one type of Bcl-2 inhibitor than ...

£20 million to fight virtual crime and treat our aging population

... but ageing population. Researchers are working on using emerging novel technologies in biological scaffolds, nano-biomaterials and self-assembling peptides to enhance and accelerate the regeneration of tissues by harnessing the power of endogenous stem cells. Applications for the research are ...

£20 million to fight virtual crime and treat our ageing population

... but ageing population. Researchers are working on using emerging novel technologies in biological scaffolds, nano-biomaterials and self-assembling peptides to enhance and accelerate the regeneration of tissues by harnessing the power of endogenous stem cells. Applications for the research are ...

Caltech researchers get first 3-D glimpse of bacterial cell-wall architecture

... architecture of the sacculus. In particular, Jensen and his colleagues have wondered whether the so-called glycan strands--which are cross-linked by peptides to create peptidoglycan--"wrap around the cell like a belt wraps around a person," or whether they stand up from the surface of the bacterial cell, ...

Bare bones of crystal growth: Biomolecules enhance metal contents in calcite

... enhances the magnesium (Mg)-content of calcite. "We knew from another study in our group (Elhadj et al., 2006, PNAS) that the chemistry of simple peptides as well as proteins could be tuned to control crystal growth rate and change crystal morphology," said Dove. "From that understanding, we realized ...

Lack of vitamin D linked to Parkinson's disease

... that vitamin D plays a role in bone formation, Evatt says. More recently, scientists have been uncovering its effects elsewhere, including producing peptides that fight microbes in the skin, regulating blood pressure and insulin levels, and maintaining the nervous system. Low vitamin D levels also appear ...

Form of Crohn's disease traced to disabled gut cells

... effects on Paneth cells, which are immune cells in the lining of a portion of the small intestine. These cells make proteins and antimicrobial peptides that they package as granules and secrete into the intestine to defend the body against infection. "When they have less Atg16L1, the Paneth cells ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Sept. 3, 2008

... new study, D. Matthew Eby, Glenn Johnson, and Karen Farrington point out that scientists have long eyed the germ-fighting potential of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). These small proteins fight a wide range of bacteria and fungi in the body and have the potential to be developed into powerful drugs to ...

Immunotherapy in high-risk pediatric sarcomas shows promising response

... and AR develop due to chromosomal translocations, which fuse a gene from one chromosome to a different chromosome. The dendritic vaccine included peptides derived from each patient's individual cancer in a way that was designed to alert a patient's immune system to the unique genetic alteration on the ...

A viral cloaking device

... peptides, small pieces that are chopped up from the cell's internal proteins, to the cell's surface. If a cell has been infected, MHC presents viral peptides to signal T cells to kill it. So some viruses evolved to evade T cells by keeping MHC from reaching the cell surface. In turn, the immune system ...

Michael J. Fox Foundation awards $2.4M for validation of therapeutic targets for Parkinson's

... University) "Hsp90 as a Target for Neuroprotective Agents in Parkinson's Disease" Kalipada Pahan, PhD, Rush University Medical Center "NBD peptides in a Non-Human Primate Model of Parkinson's Disease" Yvette F. Tache, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles "Mu Opioid Receptors as a Drug ...

Scientists demonstrate means of reducing Alzheimer's-like plaques in fly brain

... with Alzheimer's plaques. Scientists have suspected that so-called Aβ42 plaques -- those structurally composed of 42-amino acid beta amyloid peptides -- are involved in the genesis of the illness. "But the mechanism by which Aβ42 reaches pathological levels in the brains of late-onset ...