Nucleic acid aptamers to HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) are potent inhibitors of DNA polymerase function in vitro, and they have been shown to inhibit viral replication when expressed in cultured T-lymphoid lines. We monitored RT inhibition by five RNA pseudoknot RNA aptamers in a series of biochemical assays designed to mimic discrete steps of viral reverse transcription. Our results demonst...

Photopolymerization under visible light is an active research field whose intense activity supported by the recent advances in 3D and 4D printing. Within this perspective article, emerging trends photopolymerization for photocrosslinking applications will be presented. Notably, performant multicomponent photoinitiating systems extensively used past are now progressively discarded favor of mono-...

Two heme analogs, cobalt- and tin-protoporphyrin (CoPP and SnPP, respectively) have been used to probe the heme-hemopexin interaction, hemopexin receptor binding, and the mechanism of regulation of heme oxygenase (HO) and metallothionein-1 (MT-1) gene expression by hemopexin. Both CoPP and SnPP are HO inhibitors and hemopexin binds SnPP (Morgan, W. T., Alam, J., Deaciuc, V., Muster, P., Tatum, ...

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is a cellular correlate for memory formation, which requires the dynamic changes of the actin cytoskeleton. As shown by others, the polymerization of the actin network is important for early stages of LTP. Here, we investigated the role of actin dynamics in synaptic tagging and particularly in the induction of protein synthesis-dependent late-LTP in the CA1 region i...

Many heme enzymes show remarkable versatility and atypical kinetics. The fungal extracellular enzyme chloroperoxidase (CPO) characterizes a variety of one and two electron redox reactions in the presence of hydroperoxides. A structural counterpart, found in mammalian microsomal cytochrome P450 (CYP), uses molecular oxygen plus NADPH for the oxidative metabolism (predominantly hydroxylation) of ...

Platelets undergo a series of actin-dependent morphologic changes when activated by thrombin receptor activating peptide (TRAP) or when spreading on glass. Polymerization of actin results in the sequential formation of filopodia, lamellipodia, and stress fibers, but the molecular mechanisms regulating this polymerization are unknown. The Arp2/3 complex nucleates actin polymerization in vitro an...

Platelets undergo a series of actin-dependent morphologic changes when activated by thrombin receptor activating peptide (TRAP) or when spreading on glass. Polymerization of actin results in the sequential formation of filopodia, lamellipodia, and stress fibers, but the molecular mechanisms regulating this polymerization are unknown. The Arp2/3 complex nucleates actin polymerization in vitro an...