Structural flexibility in ribonucleases

Approaching structural flexibility with flexibility

Three-dimensional electron microscopy (3D-EM) is a powerful technology for imaging macromolecular complexes. Through a process known as singleparticle reconstruction, tens of thousands of separate images of a complex of interest are used to arrive at a single resolved structure. Although this method works sufficiently well for rigid macromolecular complexes, conformationally flexible complexes ...

RIBONUCLEASES: STRUCTURAL AND BIOCHEMICAL INSIGHTS INTO CYTOTOXIC ACTIVITY by

Structural basis of DNA flexibility.

It has been recently shown by us, on the basis of crystal structure database that the flexibility of B-DNA double helices depends significantly on their base sequence. Our model building studies further indicated that the existence of bifurcated cross-strand hydrogen bonds between successive base pairs is possibly the main factor behind the sequence directed DNA flexibility. These cross-strand ...

Structural flexibility of moral judgment.

One of the central assumptions of Kohlberg's theory of moral development--that moral judgment is organized in structures of the whole--was examined. Thirty men and 30 women were given 2 dilemmas from Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview, a 3rd involving prosocial behavior, and a 4th involving impaired driving. Half the Ss responded to the prosocial and impaired-driving dilemmas from the perspect...

Ribonucleases in tumor growth.

This review summarizes data on ambiguous biological functions of ribonucleases (RNases) at tumor growth. In some cases the raised level of enzyme activity in biological fluids can be regarded as an additional marker of malignant growth (pancreas cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, etc.). At the same time the activity of RNases is often lowered in tumor tissue. High substrate specificity of partic...