The effects of allelic variants of CYP2C9 (CYP2C9*2 and CYP2C9*3) on lornoxicam 5'-hydroxylation were studied using the corresponding variant protein expressed in baculovirus-infected insect cells and human liver microsomes of known genotypes of CYP2C9. The results of the baculovirus expression system showed that CYP2C9.3 gives higher K(m) and lower V(max) values for lornoxicam 5'-hydroxylation...

Until recently, actin was thought to act merely as a passive track for its motility partner, myosin, during actomyosin interactions. Yet a recent report having observed dynamical conformational changes in labeled skeletal muscle alpha-actin suggests that actin has a more active role. Because the labeling technique was still immature, however, conclusions regarding the significance of the differ...

The adenovirus fiber appears as a long, thin projection terminated by a knob (head). The fiber consists of a trimeric protein whose head domain is thought to interact with cell receptors. The head part (amino acids 388 to 582) of adenovirus type 2 fiber was produced in a baculovirus expression system. The purified protein was shown to cross-link into trimers. It was very resistant to proteolyti...

Calpain I is a heterodimeric protein that is part of a family of calcium-activated intracellular cysteine proteases presumed to play a role in mediating signals transduced by calcium. Expression of bioactive recombinant human calpain I has been achieved using the baculovirus expression system, by either co-infection with two viruses, each expressing one of the subunits, or infection with a sing...

Influenza virus neuraminidase (NA) plays a crucial role in facilitating the spread of newly synthesized virus in the host and is an important target for controlling disease progression. The NA crystal structure from the 1918 "Spanish flu" (A/Brevig Mission/1/18 H1N1) and that of its complex with zanamivir (Relenza) at 1.65-A and 1.45-A resolutions, respectively, corroborated the successful expr...

Many eukaryotic proteins have been successfully expressed in insect cells infected with a baculovirus in which the foreign gene has been placed under the control of a viral promoter. This system can be costly at large scale due to the quality of virus stock, problems of oxygen transfer, and severity of large-scale contamination. To circumvent this problem, we have investigated the expression of...