A natural lectin from the seed of peanut Arachis hypogaea was purified by singlestep affinity chromatography using galactoside-coupled agarose. The native molecular mass of purified A. hypogaea lectin (PN-L) was 29 kDa. The lectin PN-L was detected for agglutinating activity, glycoinhibiting action and thermostability. The influence of pH on those activities was also tested. The results showed ...

The design and performance of the new cold neutron chopper spectrometer (CNCS) at the Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge are described. CNCS is a direct-geometry inelastic time-of-flight spectrometer, designed essentially to cover the same energy and momentum transfer ranges as IN5 at ILL, LET at ISIS, DCS at NIST, TOFTOF at FRM-II, AMATERAS at J-PARC, PHAROS at LANSCE, and NEAT at HZB, at ...

Protein structures are essentially close-packed resembling molecular crystals in terms of packing density. Thus, excluded volume interactions in addition to constraints imposed by covalent bonds along the chain strongly restrict the molecular displacements in the protein interior. Two major types of displacements were identified in quasi-elastic neutron scattering experiments with proteins: rot...

MOTIVATION Comparing tandem mass spectra (MSMS) against a known dataset of protein sequences is a common method for identifying unknown proteins; however, the processing of MSMS by current software often limits certain applications, including comprehensive coverage of post-translational modifications, non-specific searches and real-time searches to allow result-dependent instrument control. Thi...

PURPOSE Previous studies show significantly specifically changed autoantibody reactions against retinal antigens in the serum of glaucoma and ocular hypertension (OHT) patients in comparison to healthy people. As pathogenesis of glaucoma still is unknown the aim of this study was to analyze if the serum and antibodies of glaucoma patients interact with neuroretinal cells. METHODS R28 cells we...

Lysine-specific chemical crosslinking in combination with mass spectrometry is emerging as a tool for the structural characterization of protein complexes and protein-protein interactions. After tryptic digestion of crosslinked proteins there are thousands of peptides amenable to MSMS, of which only very few are crosslinked peptides of interest. Here we describe how the advantage offered by off...

Elsewhere in this issue, Jankowski et al show that mononuclear cells produce sufficient angiotensin II (Ang II) to stimulate Ang II type 1 receptors.1 That finding alone is noteworthy; however, my attention was riveted by the methods the authors used to measure Ang II. Ang II is generally measured by radioimmunoassay. Because of antibody specificity, the samples are first purified by high-perfo...