Peanut (Arachis hypogaea) seed lectin, PNA is widely used to identify tumor specific antigen (T-antigen), Galb1-3GalNAc on the eukaryotic cell surface. The functional amino acid coding region of a cDNA clone, pBSH-PN was PCR amplified and cloned downstream of the polyhedrin promoter in the Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcNPV) based transfer vector pVL1393. Co-transfection of Spod...

Diamides, such as flubendiamide and chlorantraniliprole, belong to a new chemical class of insecticides that act as conformation-sensitive activators of insect ryanodine receptors (RyRs). Both compounds are registered for use against lepidopteran species such as the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella, a notorious global pest of cruciferous crops. Recently acquired resistance to diamide insec...

The URF13 protein, which is encoded by the mitochondrial gene T-urf13, is responsible for cytoplasmic male sterility and pathotoxin sensitivity in the Texas male-sterile cytoplasm (cms-T) of maize. Mitochondrial sensitivity to two host-specific fungal toxins (T toxins) is mediated by the interaction of URF13 and T toxins to form pores in the inner mitochondrial membrane. A carbamate insecticide...

BACKGROUND VP4 protein is as spikes on rotavirus outer capsid shell which is responsible for virus attachment to the host. VP4 induces production of neutralizing antibodies which could be used for serotyping of different isolates. METHODS Simian rotavirus SA11 gene 4 cDNA was cloned into a cloning plasmid pDONRTM by recombination reaction using clonase II enzyme mix. The resulting clone was c...

The P2X7 receptor is an extracellular ATP-gated ion channel found only in eukaryotes (Bartlett et al., 2014). Due to its unique properties among P2X receptors, such as formation of a large conductance pore, the P2X7 receptor has been implicated in devastating diseases like chronic pain (North and Jarvis, 2013). However, mechanisms underlying the P2X7 specific properties remain poorly understood...

Eukaryotic initiation factor-2B (eIF-2B) is a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) that plays a key role in the regulation of protein synthesis. In this study, we have used the baculovirus-infected Sf9 insect cell system to express and characterize the five dissimilar subunits of rat eIF-2B. GEF activity was detected in extracts of Sf9 cells expressing the epsilon-subunit alone and was grea...

Carboxyl methylation of the C-terminal prenylated cysteine, which occurs in most farnesylated and geranylgeranylated proteins, is a reversible step and is implicated in the regulation of membrane binding and cellular functions of prenylated proteins such as GTPases. The gene coding for prenylated-protein carboxyl methyltransferase (PPMT) of the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei has been clo...

Motility of the apicomplexan malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is enabled by a multiprotein glideosome complex, whose core is the class XIV myosin motor, PfMyoA, and a divergent Plasmodium actin (PfAct1). Parasite motility is necessary for host-cell invasion and virulence, but studying its molecular basis has been hampered by unavailability of sufficient amounts of PfMyoA. Here, we express...

BACKGROUND Phosphodiesterase 3A (PDE3A) and phosphodiesterase 3B (PDE3B) play a critical role in the regulation of intracellular level of adenosine 3´,5´-cyclic monophosphate (cyclic AMP, cAMP) and guanosine 3´,5´-cyclic monophosphate (cyclic GMP, cGMP). Subsequently PDE3 inhibitors have shown to relax vascular and inhibit platelet aggregation in cardiovascular disease. OBJECTIVES In this stu...

The gene encoding the 65K tegument phosphoprotein (pp65) of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) was cloned into pAc373 to construct a recombinant baculovirus (Acpp65-3) expressing pp65 in insect Sf9 cells. A baculovirus that carried a fragment of the gene, corresponding to the first 442 amino acids of pp65, was also developed, using vector pVL941 (Acpp65-2). Recombinant proteins migrating in SDS-polya...