The vitamin K-dependent gamma-glutamyl carboxylase catalyzes the posttranslational conversion of glutamic acid to gamma-carboxyglutamic acid, an amino acid critical to the function of the vitamin K-dependent blood coagulation proteins. Given the functional similarity of mammalian vitamin K-dependent carboxylases and the vitamin K-dependent carboxylase from Conus textile, a marine invertebrate, ...

De novo peptide sequencing by mass spectrometry (MS) can determine the amino acid sequence of an unknown peptide without reference to a protein database. MS-based de novo sequencing assumes special importance in focused studies of families of biologically active peptides and proteins, such as hormones, toxins, and antibodies, for which amino acid sequences may be difficult to obtain through gen...

Observations of the mollusc-hunting cone snail Conus textile during feeding reveal that prey are often stung multiple times in succession. While studies on the venom peptides injected by fish-hunting cone snails have become common, these approaches have not been widely applied to the analysis of the injected venoms from mollusc-hunters. We have successfully obtained multiple injected venom samp...

conclusions in most cases, the conus artery can be visualized in cardiac ct. a description of the conus artery should be a part of the standard clinical coronary ct angiography description. objectives to examine whether it is possible to visualize the conus artery in multi-slice computed tomography (ct). patients and methods in 79 consecutive patients (aged 56 ± 12.9 years; 13 women), 64-slice ...