The Maclura pomifera agglutinin (MPA) recognizes the T-antigen disaccharide Galβ1,3GalNAc mainly through interaction of the α-GalNAc moiety with its primary site, but the interactions of the two flanking subsites A and B with aglycones and substituents other than Gal, respectively, are not well understood. We therefore characterized the specificity of MPA in more detail by glycan microarray ana...

Capsid assembly during virus replication is a potential target for antiviral therapy. The Gag polyprotein is the main structural component of retroviral particles, and in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), it contains the sequences for the matrix, capsid, nucleocapsid, and several small polypeptides. Here, we report that at a concentration of 100 micro M, 7 of 83 tripeptide amides fro...

We use long multiple trajectories generated by molecular dynamics simulations to probe the stability of oligomers of A 16–22 (KLVFFAE) peptides in aqueous urea solution. High concentration of urea promotes the formation of -strand structures in A 16–22 monomers, whereas in water they adopt largely compact random coil structures. The tripeptide system, which forms stable antiparallel -sheet stru...

Human leukotriene A4 hydrolase (hLTA4H), which is the final and rate-limiting enzyme of arachidonic acid pathway, converts the unstable epoxide LTA4 to a proinflammatory lipid mediator LTB4 through its hydrolase function. The LTA4H is a bi-functional enzyme that also exhibits aminopeptidase activity with a preference over arginyl tripeptides. Various mutations including E271Q, R563A, and K565A ...

Peptide fibre formation via molecular self-assembly is a key step in range of cellular processes and increasingly considered as an approach to produce supramolecular biomaterials. We previously demonstrated the tripeptide lysine-dityrosine (KYY) substrate for proton-conducting melanin-like materials. Point based Raman scattering one several techniques which were used characterise secondary stru...

A coral fluorescent protein from Trachyphyllia geoffroyi, Kaede, possesses a tripeptide of His62-Tyr63-Gly64, which forms a chromophore with green fluorescence. This chromophore's fluorescence turns red following UV light irradiation. We have previously shown that such photoconversion is achieved by a formal beta-elimination reaction, which results in a cleavage of the peptide bond found betwee...

A sequence of seven alanine residues-too short to form an alpha-helix and whose side chains do not interact with each other-is a particularly simple model for testing the common description of denatured proteins as structureless random coils. The (3)J(HN alpha) coupling constants of individual alanine residues have been measured from 2 to 56 degrees C by using isotopically labeled samples. The ...