We recently identified a novel anilinoquinazoline derivative, Q15, as a potent apoptosis inducer in a panel of human cancer cell lines and determined that Q15 targets hCAP-G2, a subunit of condensin II complex, leading to abnormal cell division. However, whether the defect in normal cell division directly results in cell death remains unclear. Here, we used an mRNA display method on a microflui...

Despite recent advances, the expression of heterologous proteins in Escherichia coli for crystallization remains a nontrivial challenge. The present study investigates the efficacy of maltose-binding protein (MBP) fusion as a general strategy for rescuing the expression of target proteins. From a group of sequence-verified clones with undetectable levels of protein expression in an E. coli T7 e...

Insolubility of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli is a major impediment to their production for structural and functional studies. One way to circumvent this problem is to fuse an aggregation-prone protein to a highly soluble partner. E. coli maltose-binding protein (MBP) has emerged as one of the most effective solubilizing agents. In this chapter, we describe how to construct combinato...

mannose-binding lectin (mbl) is a ca⁺² -dependent collagenous lectin, that is produced by liver and mediates innate immune responses by opsonization of pathogens. the serum level of mbl varies widely among healthy individuals, ranging from 0.05 µg/ml (or lower) to over 5 µg/ml, mainly depending on genetic variation. this study has examined promoter and exon 1 of mbl2 genotype among 117 iranian ...

BACKGROUND Alpha-enolase is a glycolytic enzyme that catalyses the formation of phosphoenolpyruvate in the cell cytoplasm. α-Enolase and the predominantly nuclear Myc promoter-binding protein-1 (MBP-1) originate from a single gene through the alternative use of translational starting sites. MBP-1 binds to the P2 c-myc promoter and competes with TATA-box binding protein (TBP) to suppress gene tr...

Some carbohydrates are known to decrease the attachment of Acanthamoeba sp. to biological surfaces. By a method based on the reduction of a tetrazolium salt (XTT) by the mitochondrial dehydrogenases of the parasites, d-mannose and alpha-d-mannopyranoside have been shown to reduce Acanthamoeba attachment to inert surfaces, indicating that the mannose binding protein of Acanthamoeba trophozoites ...

The Escherichia coli maltose-binding protein (MBP) is used to increase the stability and solubility of proteins in bacterial protein expression systems and is increasingly being used to facilitate the production and delivery of subunit vaccines against various pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The MBP tag is presumed inert, with minimum effects on the bioactivity of the tagged protein or its bio...

Xenon-binding sites in proteins have led to a number of applications of xenon in biochemical and structural studies. Here we further develop the utility of 129Xe NMR in characterizing specific xenon-protein interactions. The sensitivity of the 129Xe chemical shift to its local environment and the intense signals attainable by optical pumping make xenon a useful NMR reporter of its own interacti...