异育银鲫体内盐酸双氟沙星血浆蛋白结合率的变化与其药代动力学研究

为了研究盐酸双氟沙星(difloxacin, DIF)在异育银鲫体内血浆蛋白结合率的变化及其与药代动力学之间的关系, 实验采用超滤法测定了DIF在异育银鲫体内血浆蛋白结合率, 运用HPLC测定其对应时间点药物浓度, 并分析了血浆蛋白结合率变化对DIF体内处置的影响。实验以感染嗜水气单胞菌的异育银鲫为感染组, 健康异育银鲫为对照组。结果显示: 感染组各时间点DIF血浆蛋白结合率均高于对照组, 感染组与对照组DIF血浆蛋白结合率与总药物浓度呈对数关系: y=-9.01ln x+74.34和y=-4.81ln x+65.15, DIF血浆蛋白结合率与游离药物浓度的对数关系式分别为: y=-6.36ln x+64.91和y=-4.36ln x+ 60.63; 感染组和对照组血浆药时曲线均可使用开放性二室模型描述; 感染组DIF的吸收和消除慢于对照组, 其表观分布容积和曲线下面积大于对照组。结果显示异育银鲫体内感染嗜水气单胞菌促使DIF血浆蛋白结合率升高; 血浆蛋白结合率升高导致药物以结合药物的形式储存于血液中可能是导致药物组织分布受限、消除缓慢、长时间滞留于血液原因之一。     

硝基还原酶结构域蛋白1在大鼠睾丸组织中特异性高表达在人类睾丸癌中表达下调

通过克隆分离鉴定得到大鼠硝基还原酶结构域蛋白1(rNOR1),发现rNOR1 cDNA含有1 418 个碱基,编码含379个氨基酸残基的rNOR1蛋白．rNOR1与人类NOR1 (hNOR1)和小鼠NOR1 (mNOR1)的同源性分别为89% 和93%,这三种同源蛋白都含有OSCP1家族的保守结构域．rNOR1基因在大鼠睾丸中选择性高表达,而且与之同源的人类hNOR1也选择性高表达于睾丸中．通过免疫组化检测人类不同睾丸癌中的hNOR1蛋白表达,发现hNOR1蛋白在非癌变睾丸组织和胚胎性癌组织中高表达,而在精原细胞癌和分化型非精原细胞癌(畸胎瘤,卵黄囊瘤)中低表达．这些数据表明,hNOR1可能是一种睾丸选择性表达基因,睾丸癌hNOR1表达的改变或许可以帮助我们阐明hNOR1蛋白在生殖细胞系肿瘤发生中的功能．     

The design of a peptide sequence to inhibit HIV replication: a search algorithm combining Monte Carlo and self-consistent mean field techniques

We developed a search algorithm combining Monte Carlo (MC) and self-consistent mean field techniques to evolve a peptide sequence that has good binding capability to the anticodon stem and loop (ASL) of human lysine tRNA species, tRNA^Lys3, with the ultimate purpose of breaking the replication cycle of human immunodeficiency virus-1. The starting point is the 15-amino-acid sequence, RVTHHAFLGAHRTVG, found experimentally by Agris and co-workers to bind selectively to hypermodified tRNA^Lys3. The peptide backbone conformation is determined via atomistic simulation of the peptide-ASL^Lys3 complex and then held fixed throughout the search. The proportion of amino acids of various types (hydrophobic, polar, charged, etc.) is varied to mimic different peptide hydration properties. Three different sets of hydration properties were examined in the search algorithm to see how this affects evolution to the best-binding peptide sequences. Certain amino acids are commonly found at fixed sites for all three hydration states, some necessary for binding affinity and some necessary for binding specificity. Analysis of the binding structure and the various contributions to the binding energy shows that: 1) two hydrophilic residues (asparagine at site 11 and the cysteine at site 12) “recognize” the ASL^Lys3 due to the VDW energy, and thereby contribute to its binding specificity and 2) the positively charged arginines at sites 4 and 13 preferentially attract the negatively charged sugar rings and the phosphate linkages, and thereby contribute to the binding affinity.     

Membrane undulation induced by NS4A of Dengue virus: a molecular dynamics simulation study

Nonstructural protein 4A (NS4A) of Dengue virus (DENV) is a membrane protein involved in rearrangements of the endoplasmic reticulum membrane that are required for formation of replication vesicles. NS4A is composed most likely of three membrane domains. The N- and C-terminal domains are supposed to traverse the lipid membrane whereas the central one is thought to reside on the membrane surface, thus forming a u-shaped protein. All three membrane domains are proposed to be helical by secondary structure prediction programs. After performing multi nanosecond molecular dynamics (MD) simulations at various temperatures (300, 310, and 315.15?K) with each of the individual domains, they are used in a docking approach to define putative association motifs of the transmembrane domains (TMDs). Two structures of the u-shaped protein are generated by separating two assembled TMDs linking them with the membrane-attached domain. Lipid undulation is monitored with the structures embedded in a fully hydrated lipid bilayer applying multiple 200?ns MD simulations at 310?K. An intact structure of the protein supports membrane undulation. The strong unwinding of the helices in the domain-linking section of one of the structures lowers its capability to induce membrane curvature. Unwinding of the link region is due to interactions of two tryptophan residues, Trp-96 and 104. These results provide first insights into the membrane-altering properties of DENV NS4A.     

Diagnosis and management of hypertension: around-the-clock ambulatory blood pressure monitoring is substantially more effective and less costly than daytime office blood pressure measurements

ABSTRACT

The cost-effectiveness of ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring (ABPM) versus traditional office BP measurement (OBPM) for the diagnosis and management of hypertension has been evaluated only by few studies and based solely on the reduction of medical care expenses through avoiding treatment of isolated-office hypertension. Data from the 21963 participants in the Hygia Project, a multicenter outcomes study that incorporates into routine primary care periodic, at least yearly, 48 h ABPM evaluation, were utilized to assess the cost-effectiveness – relative to vascular pathology expenditures countrywide in Spain – of ABPM versus OBPM. The actual reported Spanish healthcare expenditure for vascular pathology in 2015 – aggregate costs of medical examinations, outpatient and inpatient care, therapeutic interventions, plus non-healthcare services (productivity losses due to morbidity/mortality and informal family/friends-provided care) – was used to compare yearly costs when diagnostic and treatment decisions for hypertension are based on the OBPM versus the ABPM-model. Our economic analysis is based on the more realistic and feasible approach of restricting ABPM solely to high-risk individuals of age ≥60 years and/or with diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and/or previous cardiovascular event, who in the Hygia Project accounted for >90% of all documented events. The projected net benefit countrywide in favor of the proposed ABPM-model is ~5294M€/year, i.e., 360.33€/year (95%CI [347.52–374.85]) per ABPM-evaluated person. This highly conservative economic analysis indicates ABPM is a much more cost-effective strategy than repeated OBPM not only for accurate diagnosis and management of true hypertension but marked reduction of expenditures on elevated BP-associated vascular pathology.     

Patterns of protein synthesis and accumulation during oogenesis in the polychaete,Pseudopotamilla occelata Moore

Summary

Proteins synthesized and accumulated during oogenesis or Pseudopotamilla occelata were analyzed by two-dimensional Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and fluorography. Significant changes in the patterns of synthesis and accumulation occur during oogenesis, paticularly between previtellogenic and vitellogenic stages, although many of the proteins are represented throughout the process. The changes may be generally dependent upon the variation in the gene expression affecting autosynthesis of proteins. However, appearance of proteins, which occur only at the vitellogenic stages but apparently not synthesized within the oocytes, indicates that heterosynthetic proteins are stage-specifically transported into oocytes.     

Ecdysteroid Stimulated Protein Synthesis in the Male Accessory Reproductive Glands of Spodoptera litura

Summary

20-hydroxyecdysone stimulates protein synthesis in the male accessory reproductive glands of pharate adults of Spodoptera litura both in vivo and in vitro. Juvenile hormone-I has no synergistic effect when given in conjunction with ecdysone in vivo but it inhibits ecdysone-stimulated protein synthesis in vitro.     

Prediction of protein domain boundaries from inverse covariances

It has been known even since relatively few structures had been solved that longer protein chains often contain multiple domains, which may fold separately and play the role of reusable functional modules found in many contexts. In many structural biology tasks, in particular structure prediction, it is of great use to be able to identify domains within the structure and analyze these regions separately. However, when using sequence data alone this task has proven exceptionally difficult, with relatively little improvement over the naive method of choosing boundaries based on size distributions of observed domains. The recent significant improvement in contact prediction provides a new source of information for domain prediction. We test several methods for using this information including a kernel smoothing‐based approach and methods based on building alpha‐carbon models and compare performance with a length‐based predictor, a homology search method and four published sequence‐based predictors: DOMCUT, DomPRO, DLP‐SVM, and SCOOBY‐DOmain. We show that the kernel‐smoothing method is significantly better than the other ab initio predictors when both single‐domain and multidomain targets are considered and is not significantly different to the homology‐based method. Considering only multidomain targets the kernel‐smoothing method outperforms all of the published methods except DLP‐SVM. The kernel smoothing method therefore represents a potentially useful improvement to ab initio domain prediction. Proteins 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Structural divergence is more extensive than sequence divergence for a family of intrinsically disordered proteins

The p53 transactivation domain (p53TAD) is an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) domain that undergoes coupled folding and binding when interacting with partner proteins like the E3 ligase, MDM2, and the 70 kDa subunit of replication protein A, RPA70. The secondary structure and dynamics of six closely related mammalian homologues of p53TAD were investigated using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Differences in both transient secondary structure and backbone dynamics were observed for the homologues. Many of these differences were localized to the binding sites for MDM2 and RPA70. The amount of transient helical secondary structure observed for the MDM2 binding site was lower for the dog and mouse homologues, compared with human, and the amount of transient helical secondary structure observed for the RPA70 binding site was higher for guinea pig and rabbit, compared with human. Differences in the amount of transient helical secondary structure observed for the MDM2 binding site were directly related to amino acid substitutions occurring on the solvent exposed side of the amphipathic helix that forms during the p53TAD/MDM2 interaction. Differences in the amount of transient helical secondary structure were not as easily explained for the RPA70 binding site because of its extensive sequence divergence. Clustering analysis shows that the divergence in the transient secondary structure of the p53TAD homologues exceeds the amino acid sequence divergence. In contrast, strong correlations were observed between the backbone dynamics of the homologues and the sequence identity matrix, suggesting that the dynamic behavior of IDPs is a conserved evolutionary feature. Proteins 2013; 81:1686–1698. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Role of tyrosine hot‐spot residues at the interface of colicin E9 and immunity protein 9: A comparative free energy simulation study

The endonuclease activity of the bacterial colicin 9 enzyme is controlled by the specific and high‐affinity binding of immunity protein 9 (Im9). Molecular dynamics simulation studies in explicit solvent were used to investigate the free energy change associated with the mutation of two hot‐spot interface residues [tyrosine (Tyr): Tyr54 and Tyr55] of Im9 to Ala. In addition, the effect of several other mutations (Leu33Ala, Leu52Ala, Val34Ala, Val37Ala, Ser48Ala, and Ile53Ala) with smaller influence on binding affinity was also studied. Good qualitative agreement of calculated free energy changes and experimental data on binding affinity of the mutations was observed. The simulation studies can help to elucidate the molecular details on how the mutations influence protein–protein binding affinity. The role of solvent and conformational flexibility of the partner proteins was studied by comparing the results in the presence or absence of solvent and with or without positional restraints. Restriction of the conformational mobility of protein partners resulted in significant changes of the calculated free energies but of similar magnitude for isolated Im9 and for the complex and therefore in only modest changes of binding free energy differences. Although the overall binding free energy change was similar for the two Tyr–Ala mutations, the physical origin appeared to be different with solvation changes contributing significantly to the Tyr55Ala mutation and to a loss of direct protein–protein interactions dominating the free energy change due to the Tyr54Ala mutation. Proteins 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.