Objective: To investigate urinary fractions of free and peptide forms of collagen crosslinks in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (n=50), osteoarthrosis (n=38), psoriatic arthritis (n=38) and in healthy volunteers (33 adults, 17 children). Methods: Pyridinoline (PYD) and deoxypyridinoline (DPD) were measured by high performance liquid chromatography. Results: In rheumatoid arthritis (RA) all f...

Marama bean is an indigenous southern African oilseed legume with an unusual protein composition. Hence, its rheological properties were studied. Marama protein formed a highly viscous and extensible dough when compared to soya and gluten. With a dough of 38% moisture, marama protein extensibility was very high (304% of its original length), twice that of gluten and soya, and this increased con...

Recent studies have finally produced accurate measurements of the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes, confirming the anticipated results computed from quantum and molecular mechanics. Several studies have also predicted an enhancement of these material properties as a result of electron irradiation. Here we prove conclusively through a rigorous TEM imaging study that this enhancement occ...

Studies on transglutaminases usually focus on the polymerization of protein substrates by intermolecular N«(g-glutamyl)lysine bridges, without considering the possibility that the monomeric protein units, themselves, could also become crosslinked internally. Both types of crosslinks are produced in the reaction of fibrinogen with red cell transglutaminase. We isolated the transglutaminase-modif...

We have recently developed a mammalian cell free assay in which interstrand crosslinks induce DNA synthesis in both damaged and undamaged plasmids co-incubated in the same extract. We have also shown using hamster mutants that both ERCC1 and XPF are required for the observed incorporation. Here, we show that extracts from an XPF patient cell line differentially process UV mimetic damage and int...

The scattering function and radius of gyration of an ideal polymer network are calculated depending on the strength of the bonds that form the crosslinks. Our calculations are based on an exact theorem for the characteristic function of a polydisperse phantom network that allows for treating the crosslinks between pairs of randomly selected monomers as quenched variables without resorting to re...

The anticancer drug cisplatin executes its cytotoxic activity via formation of intra- and interstrand crosslinks in DNA. The relative contribution of structurally defined cisplatin adducts to induce apoptosis and the cellular processing of these lesions is still poorly understood mostly due to the lack of sensitive analytical tools for in vivo studies. Here we describe a new method to establish...

Interstrand crosslinks induce DNA replication fork stalling that in turn activates the ATR-dependent checkpoint and DNA repair on nuclear chromatin. Mitomycin C (MC) and Decarbamoyl Mitomycin C (DMC) induce different types of DNA crosslinks with DMC being a more cytotoxic agent. We previously reported that the novel DMC induced β-interstrand DNA crosslinks induce a p53-independent form of cell ...

Ionomers are polymers which contain ionic groups that are covalently bound to the main chain. The presence of a small percentage of ionic groups strongly affects the polymer's mechanical properties. Here, we examine a new family of nanostructured ionomer films prepared from core-shell polymer nanoparticles containing acrylonitrile (AN), 1,3-butadiene (Bd) and methacrylic acid (MAA). Three new A...

DNA damage by agents crosslinking the strands presents a formidable challenge to the cell to repair for survival and to repair accurately for maintenance of genetic information. It appears that repair of DNA crosslinks occurs in a path involving double strand breaks (DSBs) in the DNA. Mammalian cells have multiple systems involved in the repair response to such damage, including the Fanconi ane...