Site-specific chemical modification of proteins is important for many applications in biology and biotechnology. Recently, our laboratory and others have exploited the high specificity of the enzyme protein farnesyltransferase (PFTase) to site-specifically modify proteins through the use of alternative substrates that incorporate bioorthogonal functionality including azides and alkynes. In this...

A multienzyme system composed by recombinant dihydroxyacetone kinase from Citrobacter freundii, fuculose-1-phosphate aldolase and acetate kinase, allows a practical one-pot C-C bond formation catalysed by dihydroxyacetone phosphate-dependent aldolases from dihydroxyacetone and an aldehyde.

Tandem formation of an unsaturated zirconacycle, insertion of methallyl carbenoid, and addition of an aldehyde provides a rapid synthetic route to several linear terpenoid and terpene-polyketide natural products.

Two new papain inhibitors have been synthesized where the terminal α-carboxyl groups of Z-Phe-Ala-COOH and Ac-Phe-Gly-COOH have been replaced by a proton to give Z-Phe-Ala-H and Ac-Phe-Gly-H. We show that for papain, replacing the terminal carboxylate group of a peptide inhibitor with a hydrogen atom decreases binding 3-4 fold while replacing an aldehyde or glyoxal group with a hydrogen atom de...

Aldehyde functions are widely used for immobilization of biomolecules on glass surfaces but have found little attention for biofunctionalization of self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on gold, due to interference between thiol and aldehyde functions. This problem was recently solved by synthesis of an alkanethiol that carried a vicinal diol group [Jang et al. (2003) Nano Lett. 3, 691-694]. The lat...

Cyanide at high (millimolar) concentrations inhibited in the in vitro Vibrio harveyi luciferase reaction. Cyanide reacted with free aldehyde to form an inhibitor. Inhibitor formation was accelerated by alkaline conditions and bovine serum albumin.

Aldehyde-deformylating oxygenase (ADO) catalyzes O2-dependent release of the terminal carbon of a biological substrate, octadecanal, to yield formate and heptadecane in a reaction that requires external reducing equivalents. We show here that ADO also catalyzes incorporation of an oxygen atom from O2 into the alkane product to yield alcohol and aldehyde products. Oxygenation of the alkane produ...

Oxidation of low density lipoproteins (LDL) results in changes to the lipoprotein particle that are potentially pro-atherogenic. To investigate mechanisms contributing to the formation of cholesteryl ester (CE)-core aldehydes (9-oxononanoyl- and 5-oxovaleroyl-cholesterol; 9-ONC and 5-OVC, respectively) LDL was incubated in the presence of mouse macrophages (J774 cells) under different culture c...

Bifunctional alcohol/aldehyde dehydrogenase (ADHE) enzymes are found within many fermentative microorganisms. They catalyse the conversion of an acyl-coenzyme A to an alcohol via an aldehyde intermediate; this is coupled to the oxidation of two NADH molecules to maintain the NAD(+) pool during fermentative metabolism. The structure of the alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) domain of an ADHE protein fr...