Effects of phenylated compounds of methylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone) on diamine oxidase activity from rat small intestine

Two phenylated compounds of methylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone), potentially inhibitors of diamine oxidase activity, have been synthesized: phenylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone) and diphenylglyoxal bis(guanylhydrazone). Their inhibitory capacity was tested: while PGBG was able to reduce the enzyme activity by 50% at 1.3 microM, DPGBG was only able to reduce diamine oxidase activity by less than 2% at a concentration 1000-fold higher. The inhibition of PGBG was non-competitive and the Ki calculated by a Dixon plot was estimated as 1.7 microM.     

OPSA: an optimized prediction based scheduling approach for scientific applications in cloud environment

Cluster Computing - Cloud computing has attracted scientists to deploy scientific applications by offering services such as Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), Software-as-a-service (SaaS), and...     

Scoring function to predict solubility mutagenesis

Background  

Mutagenesis is commonly used to engineer proteins with desirable properties not present in the wild type (WT) protein, such as increased or decreased stability, reactivity, or solubility. Experimentalists often have to choose a small subset of mutations from a large number of candidates to obtain the desired change, and computational techniques are invaluable to make the choices. While several such methods have been proposed to predict stability and reactivity mutagenesis, solubility has not received much attention.     

Antimutagenicity of some citrus fruits in Salmonella typhimurium

The antimutagenic effect of 10 citrus fruit juices was observed against the mutagenicity of N-nitro-o-phenylenediamine (NPD) in TA97a and sodium azide in TA100 tester strains of Salmonella typhimurium using the Ames test. It was noticed that the juices of all these fruits reduced significantly the NPD and sodium azide induced revertant colonies. The inhibitory activity was enhanced if the mutagen and juice were co-incubated for about 30 min at 37 degrees C prior to performing the mutagenicity assay. Dilution with distilled water led to the reduction in the inhibitory activity. The antimutagenic activity of synthetic ascorbic acid or citric acid or combined ascorbic acid and citric acid was also seen. But the results with fruit juices tempted us to believe that in addition to ascorbic acid and citric acid, the presence of other factor(s) possessing antimutagenic properties cannot be ruled out.     

Rapid and sensitive ion-exchange fluorometric measurement of γ-aminobutyric acid in physiological fluids

Improvements of the ion-exchange/fluorometric method for measuring γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) have resulted in an automatic three-column analyzer which produces an analysis every 15 min using 200-μl samples to a sensitivity of 1 pmol. This high-performance liquid chromatographic procedure utilizes three stainless-steel microbore columns containing cation-exchange resin. GABA is eluted using a lithium citrate buffer and then detected in the flow stream after reaction with the fluorogenic reagent orthophthalaldehyde. Each column utilizes a timer-controlled, pneumatically actuated two-way 10-port valve containing a 200-μl loop for sample injection and a 1-ml loop for regeneration. Similar 4-port valves sequentially direct the output from one of the columns to the reaction manifold. Measurement of GABA levels in sequential aliquets of the first 20 ml of human lumbar cerebrospinal fluid revealed an increasing gradient of GABA level in cerebrospinal fluid from six patients and no gradient in a seventh patient, the mean rate of increase being 2% per milliliter.     

Production of bacteriocin by isolates ofYersinia enterocolitica from fresh buffalo milk

Fifty isolates ofYersinia enterocolitica from fresh buffalo milk were screened for the production of bacteriocin using isolates as indicators. Seven isolates (14%) were bacteriocin producers at 22°C which had more bacteriolytic activity at 37°C. Only one isolate produced bacteriocin at both temperatures.