The human beta 1,3-glucuronosyltransferase I (GlcAT-I) is the key enzyme responsible for the completion of glycosaminoglycan-protein linkage tetrasaccharide of proteoglycans (GlcA beta 1,3Gal beta 1,3Gal beta 1,4Xyl beta 1-O-serine). We have investigated the role of aspartate residues Asp194-Asp195-Asp196 corresponding to the glycosyltransferase DXD signature motif, in GlcAT-I function by UDP b...

HD amino acid duplex has been found in the active center of many different enzymes. The dyad plays remarkably different roles in their catalytic processes that usually involve metal coordination. An HD motif is positioned directly on the amyloid beta fragment (Aβ) and on the carboxy-terminal region of the extracellular domain (CAED) of the human amyloid precursor protein (APP) and a taxonomical...

Display of peptides on the surface of bacteria offers many new and exciting applications in biotechnology. Fimbriae is a good candidate for epitope display on the surface of bacteria. The potential of CS3 fimbriae of enterotoxigenic E. coli as a display system has been investigated. A novel cell surface display system with metal binding property was developed by using CS3 fimbriae. Short metal ...

and ␣X) contain an additional domain (" A " or " I ") that is inserted into the head region, where it plays a central role in ligand binding: thus, recombinant I domains reca-pitulate many of the ligand-binding properties of the The first crystal struc-United Kingdom † Department of Biochemistry ture of an I domain showed that it adopts the " dinucleo-tide-binding " fold, with a central mostly ...

Homing endonucleases typically contain one of four conserved catalytic motifs, and other elements that confer tight DNA binding. I-CreII, which catalyzes homing of the Cr.psbA4 intron, is unusual in containing two potential catalytic motifs, H-N-H and GIY-YIG. Previously, we showed that cleavage by I-CreII leaves ends (2-nt 3' overhangs) that are characteristic of GIY-YIG endonucleases, yet it ...

Calprotectin (CP) is an abundant metal-chelating protein involved in host defense, and the ability of human CP to bind Fe(ii) in a calcium-dependent manner was recently discovered. In the present study, near-infrared magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy is employed to investigate the nature of Fe(ii) coordination at the two transition-metal-binding sites of CP that are a His3Asp motif (site...

quorum sensing controls the luminescence of vibrio fischeri through the transcriptional activator luxr and the specific autoinducer signal produced by luxi. amino acid sequences of these two genes were analyzed using bioinformatics tools. luxi consists of 193 amino acids and appears to contain five α-helices and six ß-sheets when analyzed by sspro8. luxi belongs to the autoinducer synthetase fa...

Design of a paramagnetic metal binding motif in a protein is a valuable way for understanding the function, dynamics and interactions of a protein by paramagnetic NMR spectroscopy. Several strategies have been proposed to site-specifically tag proteins with paramagnetic lanthanide ions. Here we report a simple approach of engineering a transition metal binding motif via site-specific labelling ...

Detection of similarity is particularly difficult for small proteins and thus connections between many of them remain unnoticed. Structure and sequence analysis of several metal-binding proteins reveals unexpected similarities in structural domains classified as different protein folds in SCOP and suggests unification of seven folds that belong to two protein classes. The common motif, termed t...

Synthetic phytochelatins (ECs) are a new class of metal-binding peptides with a repetitive metal-binding motif, (Glu-Cys)(n)Gly, which were shown to bind heavy metals more effectively than metallothioneins. However, the limited uptake across the cell membrane is often the rate-limiting factor for the intracellular bioaccumulation of heavy metals by genetically engineered organisms expressing th...