Final instar larvae of S. mauritia treated topically on day 0, 1, 2 and day 3 with a daily dose of 20 microg juvenile hormone analogue (JHA) showed an increase in most of the nutritional parameters such as approximate digestibility, efficiency of conversion of ingested food, consumption index and growth rate. Also, the activities of digestive enzymes amylase, invertase, trehalase and protease i...

A kinetic model is presented for the comparison of potential proteolytic processing activities of wild-type and mutant human immunodeficiency virus proteases in the presence and absence of protease inhibitors. The protease processing of gag substrate in the immature virions is assessed by the kinetic parameters, kcat, Km and Ki. The relationship of the estimated potential processing activities ...

Proteins are subject to continuous quality control for optimal proteostasis. The knowledge of peroxisome quality control systems is still in its infancy. Here we show that peroxisomes contain a member of the Lon family of proteases (Pln). We show that Pln is a heptameric protein and acts as an ATP-fueled protease and chaperone. Hence, Pln is the first chaperone identified in fungal peroxisomes....

The activities of the lysosomal enzymes acid and neutral protease, N-acetylglucosaminidase, and acid phosphatase were measured in the serum of patients with fulminant hepatic failure. Acid protease (cathepsin D) activity was increased about tenfold in patients who died and nearly fourfold in those who survived fulminant hepatic failure after paracetamol overdose, whereas activities were increas...

Fractionation of the culture supernatant fluids of Serratia marcescens, strain BG, by ammonium sulfate precipitation, isoelectric focusing, ion-exchange chromatography, hydroxyapatite adsorption chromatography, and gel filtration failed to separate the rabbit cornea-damaging activity and the in vitro protease activity of the preparations. Two proteases having similar molecular weights (44,000),...

Activities of mitochondrial enzymes in blood cells from 69 patients with primary sideroblastic anemia were determined to elucidate the pathogenesis of the disease. In erythroblasts of patients with primary acquired type the activities of both delta-aminolevulinic acid synthetase and mitochondrial serine protease were inevitably decreased. The susceptibility to the protease of apo-delta-aminolev...

Raphides, needle-shaped calcium oxalate crystals in tissues of many plants, have been thought to play defensive roles against herbivores without detailed bioassays for their defensive roles and modes of function using purified raphides. In order to examine the defensive roles and modes of function of raphides in a clear experimental system, we performed bioassays giving the larvae of the Eri si...

Secretion of hydrolytic enzymes is considered a virulence factor in Candida spp. Extracellular enzymatic activities in 29 clinical isolates of Candida tropicalis were analyzed by plate assays. C. tropicalis, similar to Candida albicans, showed elevated hemolytic and esterase activities. However, unlike C. albicans, low aspartyl protease and very low phospholipase activities were detected in C. ...

The present study was carried out to investigate the impact of Banxiaxiexin Decoction on the intestinal microorganisms and enzyme activities in mice with spleen-deficiency constipation. 24 experimental mice were randomly divided into 4 groups including the normal group, the model group with spleendeficiency constipation, Banxiaxiexin Decoction treated group and Zhizhu Decoction treated group. B...

We have analyzed the biochemical consequences of mutations that affect viral RNA synthesis in Semliki Forest virus temperature-sensitive (ts) mutants. Of the six mutations mapping in the multifunctional replicase protein nsP2, three were located in the N-terminal helicase region and three were in the C-terminal protease domain. Wild-type and mutant nsP2s were expressed, purified, and assayed fo...