BACKGROUND & AIMS The pathogenesis of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) remains only partially understood, and no specific or universally effective patient management procedure has been developed to date. Our study was designed to evaluate if colonic luminal serine-proteases may be a relevant pathophysiologic marker of IBS. METHODS Fecal samples of 38 IBS patients, 15 patients with ulcerative co...

furin is a ca 2+ -dependent serine protease which cleaves proprotein substrates at the arg-xaa-(lys/arg)-arg    site to generate biologically active proteins. furin’s critical role in many cellular events associated with health disorders such as hiv, sars, anthrax, and influenza as well as cancer has made inhibitors of this enzyme as therapeutic targets. to this date, the most potent inhibitor ...

Matriptase is a type II transmembrane serine protease. In the present study, matriptase C-terminal fragments containing the catalytic serine protease domain were found to occur on the apical and basolateral sides of Madin-Darby canine kidney epithelial cells transfected with a cDNA encoding the protease. This suggests that matriptase interacts with various potential substrates when expressed in...

Bee venom contains a variety of peptides and enzymes, including serine proteases. While the presence of serine proteases in bee venom has been demonstrated, the role of these proteins in bee venom has not been elucidated. Furthermore, there is currently no information available regarding the melanization response or the fibrin(ogen)olytic activity of bee venom serine protease, and the molecular...

It has been shown that erythrocyte membrane proteins become susceptible to degradation by membrane-bound serine protease activity after oxidative modification of the membranes (M. Beppu, M. Inoue, T. Ishikawa, K. Kikugawa, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1196 (1994) 81-87). The aim of the present study was to clarify the presence of the serine protease in oxidized erythrocyte membranes and to characteri...

BACKGROUND Pollen is an important trigger of allergic rhinitis, conjunctivitis, and/or asthma, and an exacerbating factor in atopic dermatitis. Although it is proposed that protease activity from allergen sources, such as mites, enhances allergenicity, little information is available on that from relevant allergenic pollens such as Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress pollens, which are the majo...

We review the structure and function of three kinds of mosaic serine proteases expressed in the mammalian central nervous system (CNS). Mosaic serine proteases have several domains in the proenzyme fragment, which modulate proteolytic function, and a protease domain at the C-terminus. Spinesin/TMPRSS5 is a transmembrane serine protease whose presynaptic distribution on motor neurons in the spin...

The recognition of lysine-type peptidoglycans (PG) by the PG recognition complex has been suggested to cause activation of the serine protease cascade leading to the processing of Spätzle and subsequent activation of the Toll signaling pathway. So far, two serine proteases involved in the lysine-type PG Toll signaling pathway have been identified. One is a modular serine protease functioning as...