This research investigated the self-healing potential of early age cracks in cement-based materials incorporating the bacteria which can produce carbonic anhydrase. Cement-based materials specimens were pre-cracked at the age of 7, 14, 28, 60 days to study the repair ability influenced by cracking time, the width of cracks were between 0.1 and 1.0 mm to study the healing rate influenced by widt...

Zinc ion-induced pyrrole hydrogen ionization from a histidyl residue has recently been suggested as the source of the activity-related deprotonation in carbonic anhydrase (EC 4.2.1.1; carbonate hydro-lyase) occurring at pH 7-8. The results offered to support the hypothesis are shown to be deficient. Examination of the literature reveals no precedent for such a pronounced acidification from pK(a...

When the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is placed under low CO(2) conditions it adapts by making an inorganic carbon accumulating mechanism. Algal cells were labeled with (35)SO(4) (-2) during this adaptation period and labeled proteins specific for this low CO(2) adaptation were identified. Four major proteins were preferentially synthesized under low CO(2) conditions and had...

Investigations of the rapid enzyme carbonic anhydrase have now been extended by crystallographic analysis at high CO2 pressures to examine the movements of water molecules in different steps of the catalysis. The rate of catalysis seems well explained by the assembled observations.

A novel method for de novo drug design, GroupBuild, has been developed to suggest chemically reasonable structures which fill the active sites of enzymes. The proposed molecules provide good steric and electrostatic contact with the enzyme and exist in low-energy conformations. These structures are composed entirely of individual functional groups (also known as "building blocks" or "fragments"...

Spider silk is strong and extensible but still biodegradable and well tolerated when implanted, making it the ultimate biomaterial. Shortcomings that arise in replicating spider silk are due to the use of recombinant spider silk proteins (spidroins) that lack native domains, the use of denaturing conditions under purification and spinning and the fact that the understanding of how spiders contr...

Capsaicin, the component responsible for the pungency of chili peppers, shows beneficial effects in many diseases, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In the present study, the potential targets of capsaicin were predicted using PharmMapper and confirmed via chemical-protein interactome (CPI) and molecular docking. Carbonic anhydrase 2 was identified as the main disease-related t...

A procedure is presented which can be used to analyse the isozymes of carbonic anhydrase (CA I and CA II) as well as other specific soluble proteins of individual erythrocytes. The concentration of red cell CA I in the pig-tailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina) was estimated by the technique employed, as well as the relative concentration in individual cells. In addition, the basic technique was mo...

The growth of molluscan shell crystals is generally thought to be initiated from the extrapallial fluid by matrix proteins, however, the cellular mechanisms of shell formation pathway remain unknown. Here, we first report amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) precipitation by cellular biomineralization in primary mantle cell cultures of Pinctada fucata. Through real-time PCR and western blot analys...

The biosynthesis of a 36 kilodalton polypeptide of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii was induced by photoautotrophic growth on low CO(2). Fractionation studies using the cell-wall-deficient strain of C. reinhardtii, CC-400, showed that this polypeptide was different from the low CO(2)-induced periplasmic carbonic anhydrase. In addition, the 36 kilodalton polypeptide was found to be localized in intact ...