BACKGROUND Pertussis toxin (PTX), an exotoxin of Bordetella pertussis, enhances the development of experimental autoimmune diseases such as experimental autoimmune uveitis (EAU) and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in rodent models. The mechanisms of the promotion of experimental autoimmune diseases by PTX may be based upon PTX-induced disruption of the blood eye/brain barriers f...

In January of that year George D Lundberg, Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA], was sacked by the American Medical Association (Anderson 1999). Some five months later, Jerome P Kassirer, Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, left the Journal when his contract with the Massachusetts Medical Society, the journal’s owners, was not renewed (Smith 1999). At the ...

The rainfall and runoff relationship becomes an intriguing issue as urbanization continues to evolve worldwide. In this paper, we developed a simulation model based on the soil conservation service curve number (SCS-CN) method to analyze the rainfall-runoff relationship in Guangzhou, a rapid growing metropolitan area in southern China. The SCS-CN method was initially developed by the Natural Re...

The conformational properties of CP-10(42-55), a peptide corresponding to the hinge region of CP-10, were investigated using circular dichroism spectroscopy and reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC). The circular dichroism studies indicated that CP-10(42-55) formed considerable secondary structure in the presence of hydrophobic solution environments including 50% aceton...

Pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide (PACAP) and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) activate two shared receptors, VPAC1 and VPAC2. Activation of VPAC1 has been implicated in elevating glucose output, whereas activation of VPAC2 may be involved in insulin secretion. A hypothesis that a VPAC2-selective agonist would enhance glucose disposal by stimulating insulin secretion without cau...

Our lab has demonstrated that encephalitogenic T cells can be effectively anergized by treatment with MHC variant peptides, which are analogues of immunogenic peptides containing an amino acid substitution at an MHC anchor residue. The MHC variant peptide of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG)(35-55) proves an effective treatment as it does not induce symptoms of experimental autoimmune e...

abstract background antibiotic resistance makes antimicrobial peptides (amps) agents an alternative for treatment of pathogenic diseases. they are isolated from various animals invertebrates, vertebrates and plants. the present study shows the electrophoretic pattern of protein and peptides from vicia faba seed and reports our first attempt to study the antibacterial activity of vicia faba seed...

Although proteins consist exclusively of L-amino acids, we have reported that aspartyl (Asp) 58 and Asp 151 residues of αA-crystallin of eye lenses from elderly cataract donors are highly inverted and isomerized to D-β, D-α and L-β-Asp residues through succinimide intermediates. Of these Asp isomers, large amounts of D-β- and L-β-isomers are present but the amount of D-α-isomer is not significa...

The amyloid β (Aβ) peptide associated with Alzheimer's disease results from processing of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) by secretases. Cleavage of APP by β-secretase produces a 99 amino acid C-terminal fragment of APP (C99) consisting of a single transmembrane (TM) helix. Simulations of C99 congeners and structural studies of C99 in surfactant micelles and lipid vesicles have shown that a...