It is well-known that the typical protein’s three-dimensional structure is relatively unstable in harsh conditions. A practical approach to maintain the folded state and thus improve the stability and activity of proteins in unusual circumstances is to directly apply stabilizing substances such as osmolytes to the protein-containing solutions. Osmolytes as natural occurring organic molecules ty...

It is well-known that the typical protein’s three-dimensional structure is relatively unstable in harsh conditions. A practical approach to maintain the folded state and thus improve the stability and activity of proteins in unusual circumstances is to directly apply stabilizing substances such as osmolytes to the protein-containing solutions. Osmolytes as natural occurring organic molecules ty...

Introduction Organic osmolytes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of myelinolysis because some of them are accumulated slowly during correction of chronic hyponatremia. I investigated whether there was a topographic correlation between demyelinative lesions and the regional changes of organic osmolytes after rapid correction of chronic hyponatremia. In normal female Sprague-Dawley rats, c...

The capacity of cells to correct their volume in response to hyposmotic stress via the efflux of inorganic and organic osmolytes is well documented. However, the ability of cell-surface receptors, in particular G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), to regulate this homeostatic mechanism has received much less attention. Mechanisms that underlie the regulation of cell volume are of particular imp...

The phase-transition temperatures of an elastin-like polypeptide (ELP) with the (GVGVP)40 sequence and solvent dipolarity/polarizability, hydrogen-bond donor acidity, and hydrogen-bond acceptor basicity in its aqueous solutions were quantified in the absence and presence of different salts (Na2SO4, NaCl, NaClO4, and NaSCN) and various osmolytes (sucrose, sorbitol, trehalose, and trimethylamine ...

Intracellular accumulation of sucrose in response to lowered water activity seems to occur only in photosynthetic organisms. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, the potent ability of this common sugar, supplied exogenously, to reduce growth inhibition of Sinorhizobium meliloti cells in media of inhibitory osmolarity. Independently of the nature of the growth substrates and the osmotic agen...

Proteins' thermal stabilization is a significant problem in various biomedical, biotechnological, and technological applications. We investigated thermal stability of hen egg white lysozyme in aqueous solutions of the following stabilizing osmolytes: Glycine (GLY), N-methylglycine (NMG), N,N-dimethylglycine (DMG), N,N,N-trimethylglycine (TMG), and trimethyl-N-oxide (TMAO). Results of CD-UV spec...

PURPOSE Many cataractogenic stresses also induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in lens epithelial cells (LECs), which appears to be one of the universal inducers of cell death. In galactosemic rats, activation of ER stress results in the activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR)-dependent death pathway, production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and cell death. All are induced and...

Osmolytes are an integral part of living organism, e.g., the kidney uses sorbitol, trimethylglycine, taurine and myo-inositol to counter the deleterious effects of urea and salt. Therefore, knowing that the osmolytes' act either directly to the protein or mediated through water is of great importance. Our experimental and computational results show that protecting osmolytes, e.g., trimethylglyc...