Motivation: Understanding the substrate specificity of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 protease is important when designing effective HIV-1 protease inhibitors. Furthermore, characterizing and predicting the cleavage profile of HIV-1 protease is essential to generate and test hypotheses of how HIV-1 affects proteins of the human host. Currently available tools for predicting cleavage by HI...

proteases play a key role in protein digestion in ticks and other haematophagous insects. our understanding of blood meal digestion in digestive system of ticks can be very useful for better understanding of basic rules for control of ticks. cells of the midgut endocytose blood components. blood proteins uptake by midgut cells, suggesting the presence of proteases in the midgut cells. in this s...

Development of persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection may be mediated by HCV NS3 · 4A protease-dependent inhibition of host innate immunity. When double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is detected in virus-infected cells, host innate immunity mounts an antiviral response by upregulating production of type I interferons (α/β interferon [IFN-α/β]); HCV counters by cleaving the IFN-β stimulator 1 (IPS-...