Expression of Enterocin-P in HEK Platform: Evaluation of Its Cytotoxic Effects on Cancer Cell Lines and Its Potency to Interact with Cell-Surface Glycosaminoglycan by Molecular Modeling

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Introduction of natural compounds with anticancer properties can be an...     

Secretory Expression of a Chimeric Peptide in Lactococcus lactis: Assessment of its Cytotoxic Activity and a Deep View on Its Interaction with Cell-Surface Glycosaminoglycans by Molecular Modeling

Probiotics and Antimicrobial Proteins - Nowadays, cancer remains a major cause of death affecting millions of people. Currently, the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as potent anticancer therapeutic...     

How statin drugs affect exosomes?

Statins reduce serum cholesterol and isoprenoids by the inhibition of cholesterol synthesis in the mevalonate pathway. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles (30–200 nm) released by all cells that regulate cell-to-cell communication in health and disease by transferring functional proteins, metabolites and nucleic acids to recipient cells. There are many reports that show an effect of statins on exosomes, from their production and release to their content and performance. In this review, we have summarized existing data on the impact of statins on the biosynthesis, secretion, content, uptake and function of exosomes.     

Designing of a Functional Chimeric Protein for Production of Nanobodies Against Human CD20: Molecular Dynamics Simulation and In Vitro Verification

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - One major issue in cancer immunotherapy is the large size of mAbs (150 kDa) which usually causes limitation in tumor...     

Computational Peptide Engineering Approach for Selection the Best Engendered Camel Lactoferrin-Derive Peptide with Potency to Interact with DNA

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are native and safe short peptides with valuable biological effects. Nowadays, these components and their...     

Region-Based Epitope Prediction,Docking and Dynamic Studies of OMP31 as a Dominant Antigen in Human and Sheep Brucella

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - Brucella is an important zoonotic pathogen which causes significant commercial loss in industry and considerable disease in livestock...     

Development and use of quantitative competitive PCR assays for relative quantifying rumen anaerobic fungal populations in both in vitro and in vivo systems

This paper describes the use of a quantitative competitive polymerase chain reaction (QC-PCR) assay; using PCR primers to the rRNA locus of rumen fungi and a standard-control DNA including design and validation. In order to test the efficiency of this method for quantifying anaerobic rumen fungi, it has been attempted to evaluate this method in in vitro conditions by comparing with an assay based on measuring cell wall chitin. The changes in fungal growth have been studied when they are grown in in vitro on either untreated (US) or sodium hydroxide treated wheat straw (TS). Results showed that rumen fungi growth was significantly higher in treated samples compared with untreated during the 12 d incubation (P < 0.05) and plotting the chitin assay's results against the competitive PCR's showed high positive correlation (R² ≥ 0.87). The low mean values of the coefficients of variance in repeatability in the QC-PCR method against the chitin assay demonstrated more reliability of this new approach. And finally, the efficiency of this method was investigated in in vivo conditions. Samples of rumen fluid were collected from four fistulated Holstein steers which were fed four different diets (basal diet, high starch, high sucrose and starch plus sucrose) in rotation. The results of QC-PCR showed that addition of these non-structural carbohydrates to the basal diets caused a significant decrease in rumen anaerobic fungi biomass. The QC-PCR method appears to be a reliable and can be used for rumen samples.     

Expression and Purification of the Main Component Contained in Camel Milk and Its Antimicrobial Activities Against Bacterial Plant Pathogens

Lactoferrin is the most dominant protein in milk after casein. This protein plays a crucial role in many biological processes including the regulation of iron metabolism, induction and modulation of the immune system, the primary defense against microorganisms, inhibiting lipid peroxidation and presenting antimicrobial activity against various pathogens such as parasites, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. The major antimicrobial effect of lactoferrin is related to its N-terminal tail where different peptides for instance lactoferricin and lactoferrampin which are important for their antimicrobial abilities are present. The growth rate of bacterial cells in camel milk is lower than that of the cow milk due to having more antimicrobial compounds. In this study, we have fused a codon-optimized partial camel lactoferrcin and lactoferrampin DNA sequences in order to construct a fused peptide via a lysine. This chimeric 42-mer peptide consists of complete and partial amino acid sequence of camel lactoferrampin and lactoferricin, respectively. Human embryonic kidney 293 (HEK-293) cells were used for synthesizing this recombinant peptide. Finally, the antibacterial activities of this constructed peptide were investigated under in vitro condition. The result showed that, all construction, cloning and expression processes were successfully performed in HEK-293. One His-tag tail was added to the chimera in order to optimize the isolation and purification processes and also reduce the cost of production. Additionally, His-tag retained the antimicrobial activity of the chimera. The antimicrobial tests showed that the growth rate in the majority of bacterial plant pathogens, including gram negative and positive bacteria, was inhibited by recombinant chimera as the level of MIC values were evaluated between 0.39 and 25.07 μg/ml for different bacterial isolates.     

A Novel Chimeric Anti-HCV Peptide Derived from Camel Lactoferrin and Molecular Level Insight on Its Interaction with E2

International Journal of Peptide Research and Therapeutics - In the present study, a novel chimeric peptide was derived from camel lactoferrin designed with a considerable anti-HCV activity and its...