Membrane peptidases play important roles in cell activation, proliferation and communication. Human fibroblast-like synoviocytes express considerable amounts of aminopeptidase N/CD13, dipeptidyl peptidase IV/CD26, and neprilysin/CD10, transmembrane proteins previously proposed to be involved in the regulation of intra-articular levels of neuropeptides and chemotactic mediators as well as in adh...

Circadian variations of alanine aminopeptidase (EC 3.4.11.2), gamma-glutamyltransferase (EC 2.3.2.2), and N-acetyl-beta-glucosaminidase (EC 3.2.1.30) in urine were studied in 10 healthy children, ages six to 15 years. Urine specimens were collected during 24 h, grouped into four time intervals. Enzymes were measured spectrophotometrically, with automation. These enzymes all showed diurnal varia...

The nucleotide sequence of the pepN gene from Lactococcus lactis encoding a zinc-metallo aminopeptidase has been determined. The open reading frame of 2,538 base pairs encodes a protein with a calculated M(r) of 95,368, which agrees with the apparent M(r) of 95,000 of the gene product which was identified by polyclonal antibodies raised against the purified aminopeptidase. The amino acid sequen...

proteases (Mann, 1964). Some of them have been partially purified and charac¬ terized by Lundquist (1953), who described an aminopeptidase, which readily hydrolyses both diand tripeptides to leucylpeptides, without any preference. During recent years, however, several new chromogenic substrates have been introduced to the study of proteolytic activity (Nachlas, Goldstein & Seligman, 1962), and ...

ankylosing spondylitis (as) is an inflammatory arthritis, which affects mainly spine and sacroiliac joints. according to recent studies, erap1 is the second most common candidate gene for  as susceptibility after hla-b27. the  aim of this study was to  determine the association of erap1 gene polymorphisms with as in iranian population. the study group comprised 387 iranian as patients and 316 h...

There are two types of feline coronaviruses that can be distinguished by serology and sequence analysis. Type I viruses, which are prevalent in the field but are difficult to isolate and propagate in cell culture, and type II viruses, which are less prevalent but replicate well in cell culture. An important determinant of coronavirus infection, in vivo and in cell culture, is the interaction of...

Acanthamoeba is free-living protist pathogen capable of causing a blinding keratitis and granulomatous encephalitis. However, the mechanisms of Acanthamoeba pathogenesis are still not clear. Here, our results show that cells co-cultured with pathogenic Acanthamoeba would be spherical and floated, even without contacting the protists. Then, the Acanthamoeba protists would contact and engulf thes...