Orphan kinases turn eccentric

Extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 regulate the balance between eccentric and concentric cardiac growth.

RATIONALE An increase in cardiac afterload typically produces concentric hypertrophy characterized by an increase in cardiomyocyte width, whereas volume overload or exercise results in eccentric growth characterized by cellular elongation and addition of sarcomeres in series. The signaling pathways that control eccentric versus concentric heart growth are not well understood. OBJECTIVE To det...

Eccentric Behavior of Eccentric Planets

Recent increases in the discovery of high multiplicity Sub-Jovian planetary systems, in addition to discoveries of giant planets of high eccentricities in these multiple body systems, lead to questions into their origins and evolution. The study of secular interactions is not new, however it has only recently been applied to exoplanetary systems. These systems sometimes fall far from the classi...

The Wnt receptor CRD domain is also found in MuSK and related orphan receptor tyrosine kinases

The receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) MuSK is part of the receptor complex that initiates neuromuscular junction formation in response to agrin [1–3]. MuSK, as well as the related orphan RTK-like proteins Ror1 and Ror2 [4], and their homologs in lower organisms, have an extracellular region composed of varying combinations of immunoglobulin and Kringle domains, but they all also have a domain defi...

To the Framingham data, turn, turn, turn.

β-Turn sequences promote stability of peptide substrates for kinases within the cytosolic environment.

A strategy was developed to extend the lifetime of an peptide-based substrate for Abl kinase in the cytosolic environment. Small β-turn structures were added to the peptide's N-terminus to block entry into peptidase catalytic sites. The influence of the size of the β-turn and two covalent cross-linking strategies on the rate of hydrolysis was assessed. The most peptidase-resistant substrate was...