Desquamation is described as a protease-dependent phenomenon where serine proteases with a basic pH optimum play a key role. Recently proteases with an acidic pH optimum were identified in the stratumcorneum and associated with desquamation, e.g., cathepsin D and the stratum corneum thiol protease. The purpose of this study was to investigate if human stratum corneum contains proteases differen...

Poly(L-lactic acid) (PLA)-degrading Amycolatopsis sp. strains K104-1 and K104-2 were isolated by screening 300 soil samples for the ability to form clear zones on the PLA-emulsified mineral agar plates. Both of the strains assimilated >90% of emulsified 0.1% (wt/vol) PLA within 8 days under aerobic conditions. A novel PLA depolymerase with a molecular weight of 24,000 was purified to homogeneit...

Calpains are intracellular, cysteine proteases found in plants, animals, and fungi. There is emerging evidence that they are important mediators of cell adhesion and motility in animal cells. Because the cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium discoideum, is a genetically tractable model for cell adhesion and motility, we have investigated whether a calpain-like protein is expressed in this organism...

Chaperone proteins are vital proteins required by many bacteria during normal growth and also under conditions of severe stress to maintain cell viability. Chaperone proteins assist in the proper refolding of proteins or the assembly of proteases that process proteins that cannot be altered conformationally [1,2]. Heat shock proteins act as chaperones and interact with hydrophobic residues expo...

OBJECTIVE Production of several metalloproteinases (MMPs) from smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and macrophages causes matrix destruction and atherosclerotic plaque instability. Statins, which inhibit HMG-CoA reductase and hence cholesterol and isoprenoid synthesis, stabilize plaques. We investigated whether statins inhibit MMP secretion from SMCs and macrophages. METHODS AND RESULTS We used human ...

A novel expression vector constructed from genes of Pichia pastoris was applied for heterologous gene expression in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Recombinant streptokinase (SK) was synthesized by cloning the region encoding mature SK under the control of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAP) promoter of Pichia pastoris in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. SK was intracellularly expressed constitut...