Residue Asn57 of bovine liver cytochrome b5 has been replaced with a cysteine residue, and the resulting variant has been isolated from recombinant Escherichia coli as a mixture of four major species: A, BI, BII, and C. A combination of electronic spectroscopy, 1H NMR spectroscopy, resonance Raman spectroscopy, electrospray mass spectrometry, and direct electrochemistry has been used to charact...

Recombinant ricin A chain was chemically linked to monoclonal antibodies directed toward human breast cancer cells, a human T-cell differentiation antigen, and mouse transferrin receptor. Three types of immunotoxins were prepared; in two of them the antibody was linked to recombinant ricin A chain by a disulfide bond and in the third, a nonreducible thioether bond was used. Immunotoxins contain...

Cell-free extracts from Escherichia coli cleave the thioether linkage of S-ribosylhomocysteine and generate free homocysteine. Homocysteine was quantitatively recovered from reaction mixtures by ion exchange chromatography on Amberlite CG-120 resin. Free ribose was not a product of this cleavage; however, a compound initially derived from the ribose moiety of S-ribosylhomocysteine has been isol...

Thioether-containing poly(para-phenylene-ethynylene) (PPE) copolymers show a strong fluorescence turn-on response when exposed to oxidants in solution as a result of the selective conversion of thioether substituents into sulfoxides and sulfones. We propose that the increase in fluorescence quantum yield (Phi(F)) upon oxidation is the result of both an increase in the rate of fluorescence (k(F)...

Recent single-molecule experiments indicated that thioethers (dialkyl sulfides) on gold surfaces act as thermallyor mechanically activated molecular rotors, although the mechanisms for these phenomena are not yet clearly understood. Here we present theoretical and experimental investigations of the rotational dynamics of these thioether molecules. Single-molecule studies utilizing low-temperatu...

Three phenothiazine (PTZ) derivatives with varying degrees of sulfur oxidation states were synthesized as strong electron donors. The thioether, sulfoxide and sulfone PTZ-derivatives exhibited irreversible oxidation at 0.19 V, 0.29 V and 0.31 V versus ferrocene, respectively. Each PTZ derivative was emissive with lifetimes of 1.7 ns, 0.5 ns, and 0.5 ns and absolute quantum yields of 0.32, 0.23 ...

Prenylated proteins contain either a 15-carbon farnesyl or a 20-carbon geranylgeranyl isoprenoid covalently attached via a thioether bond to a cysteine residue at or near their C terminus. As prenylated proteins comprise up to 2% of the total protein in eukaryotic cells, and the thioether bond is a stable modification, their degradation raises a metabolic challenge to cells. A lysosomal enzyme ...

The thioether rings in the lantibiotics lacticin 3147 and nisin are posttranslationally introduced by dehydration of serines and threonines, followed by coupling of these dehydrated residues to cysteines. The prepeptides of the two-component lantibiotic lacticin 3147, LtnA1 and LtnA2, are dehydrated and cyclized by two corresponding bifunctional enzymes, LtnM1 and LtnM2, and are subsequently pr...