CONTEXT Increased bone fragility is a frequent complication of hypercortisolism due predominantly to suppression of bone formation. Sclerostin is an osteocyte-produced negative regulator of bone formation, which is up-regulated by glucocorticoids in mice. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to assess the effect of endogenous hypercortisolism on circulating sclerostin and bone turnover in humans. DE...

The flavin-dependent homotetrameric enzyme pyranose 2-oxidase (P2O) is found mostly, but not exclusively, in lignocellulose-degrading fungi where it catalyzes the oxidation of β-d-glucose to the corresponding 2-keto sugar concomitantly with hydrogen peroxide formation during lignin solubilization. Here, we present crystal structures of P2O from the efficient lignocellulolytic basidiomycete Phan...

Surfactant protein B (SP-B) is an essential constituent of pulmonary surfactant. SP-B is synthesized in alveolar type II cells as a preproprotein and processed to the mature peptide by the cleavage of NH2- and COOH-terminal peptides. An aspartyl protease has been suggested to cleave the NH2-terminal propeptide resulting in a 25-kDa intermediate. Napsin, an aspartyl protease expressed in alveola...

We recently reported the isolation and sequencing of sortilin, a new putative sorting receptor that binds receptor-associated protein (RAP). The luminal N-terminus of sortilin comprises a consensus sequence for cleavage by furin, R41WRR44, which precedes a truncation originally found in sortilin isolated from human brain. We now show that the truncation results from cellular processing. Sortili...

Enterococci account for nearly 10% of all nosocomial infections and constitute a significant treatment challenge due to their multidrug resistance properties. One of the well-studied virulence factors of Enterococcus faecalis is a secreted bacterial protease, termed gelatinase, which has been shown to contribute to the process of biofilm formation. Gelatinase belongs to the M4 family of bacteri...

Small-angle x-ray diffraction spectra of dermatosparactic tendon collagen show a decreased intensity of the first order reflection. We interprete this finding to be due to the N-terminal propeptide which fills the intermolecular gap region partially.

A laccase from Coprinus cinereus is active at alkaline pH, an essential property for some potential applications. We cloned and sequenced three laccase genes (lcc1, lcc2, and lcc3) from the ink cap basidiomycete C. cinereus. The lcc1 gene contained 7 introns, while both lcc2 and lcc3 contained 13 introns. The predicted mature proteins (Lcc1 to Lcc3) are 58 to 80% identical at the amino acid lev...

Plant class III peroxidase (PRX) catalyzes the oxidation and oxidative polymerization of a variety of phenolic compounds while reducing hydrogen peroxide. PRX proteins are classified into apoplast type and vacuole type based on the absence or the presence of C-terminal propeptides, which probably function as vacuolar sorting signals (VSSs). In this study, in order to improve our understanding o...