A simple method with improved sensitivity for the temperature dependent, and enzyme activity can be lost detection of diVerent groups of proteinases in complex mixtures separated by polyacrylamide electrophoresis and overlaid with a nitrocellulose membrane impregnated with speciWc p-nitroanilide (pNA)1 substrates is described. A drawback of the direct testing of proteinase activity in a polyacr...

Activity of the cysteine adducts of the cysteine proteinases papain and thaumatopain can be recovered by treatment with thioredoxin, thioredoxin reductase and NADPH. Recovery of proteinase activity did not occur if any of the components of the thioredoxin system were omitted, or if thioredoxin or thioredoxin reductase were heat-inactivated. Such an enzyme-mediated process may be of significance...

An ELISA was developed using chicken cystatin as a capture agent for the immunodiagnosis of paragonimiasis and fascioliasis. The assay detected specific antibodies to fluke cysteine proteinases without the need for purified proteinases. An ELISA plate was sensitized with chicken egg white cystatin, incubated with excretory-secretory (ES) products of adult flukes, and standard ELISA procedures w...

Cysteine proteinases, particularly cathepsins B and L, have been strongly implicated in fostering metastasis in mice. In this work four different inhibitors of cysteine proteinases have been shown to inhibit the invasion of the human amnion by murine melanoma and mammary carcinoma cells in vitro. Two of the inhibitors are synthetic peptides |ZPhePheCHN2 (benzyloxycarbonyl-i.-phenylalanyl-i.-phe...

Protease nexin I is a proteinase inhibitor that is secreted by human fibroblasts and forms stable complexes with certain serine proteinases; the complexes then bind to the fibroblasts and are rapidly internalized and degraded. In this report, we show that this inhibitor, which is present in very low concentrations in plasma, has functional and structural similarities to C1 inhibitor, an abundan...

Cysteine proteinases from the fruit and latex of plants, including papaya, pineapple and fig, were previously shown to have a rapid detrimental effect, in vitro, against the rodent gastrointestinal nematodes, Heligmosomoides polygyrus (which is found in the anterior small intestine) and Trichuris muris (which resides in the caecum). Proteinases in the crude latex of papaya also showed anthelmin...

Three proteinases which digest hemoglobin rapidly at acid pH (3.5 to 4.5) were identified in crude extracts of soybean (Merr.) leaves and separated by chromatography on DEAE-cellulose. All three enzymes were endopeptidases as judged by the ratio of alpha-amino-nitrogen plus peptide nitrogen over alpha-amino-nitrogen in the trichloroacetic acid-soluble portion of hemoglobin digests. Proteinase I...

Picornaviral proteinases are responsible for maturation cleavages of the viral polyprotein, but also catalyze the degradation of cellular targets. Using graphical visualization techniques and neural network algorithms, we have investigated the sequence specificity of the two proteinases 2Apro and 3Cpro. The cleavage of VP0 (giving rise to VP2 and VP4), which is carried out by a so-far unknown p...

A model of the barley-grain aspartic proteinase (HvAP; Hordeum vulgare aspartic proteinase) has been constructed using the rule-based comparative modelling approach encoded in the COMPOSER suite of computer programs. The model was based on the high resolution crystal structures of six highly homologous aspartic proteinases. Results suggest that the overall three-dimensional structure of HvAP (e...