For more than a century, urea has been commonly used as an agent for denaturing proteins. However, the mechanism behind its denaturing power is still not well understood. Here we show by molecular dynamics simulations that a 7 M aqueous urea solution unfolds a chain of purely hydrophobic groups which otherwise adopts a compact structure in pure water. The unfolding process arises due to a weake...

INTRODUCTION The Serum and Glucocorticoid regulated kinases (SGK) are a family of serine/threonine protein kinases that show extensive sequence homology to the Protein Kinase B (PKB/Akt) enzymes. Three isoforms exist in humans: SGK1, SGK2 and SGK3. Like PKB, SGK1 acts downstream of phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K) (1). PKB requires phosphorylation of its activation loop and of a hydrophobic...

Odorant binding proteins (OBPs) transport hydrophobic odor molecules across the sensillar lymph to trigger a neuronal response. Herein, the Minus-C OBP (DhelOBP21) was characterized from Dastarcus helophoroides, the most important natural parasitic enemy insect that targets Monochamus alternatus. Homology modeling and molecular docking were conducted on the interaction between DhelOBP21 and 17 ...

Doxorubicin (Dox) is an anthracycline anticancer drug with high water solubility, whose use is limited primarily due to significant side effects. In this study it is shown that Dox interacts with monosialoglycosphingolipid (GM1) ganglioside micelles primarily through hydrophobic interactions independent of pH and ionic strength. In addition, Dox can be incorporated even into GM1 micelles alread...