Tumor targeting by oligomers is largely limited by the pharmacokinetics and cell-membrane transport obstacles. In this article, we describe the use of a delivery nanoparticle, in which streptavidin served as a convenient bridge between a biotinylated oligomer and a biotinylated cell-membrane-penetrating peptide, to improve the delivery of an antisense phosphorodiamidate morpholino (MORF) oligom...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The aim of this study was to identify the clinical characteristics and potential mechanisms relevant to pathological proteins in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients who experience fatigue. METHODS PD patients (n=102) were evaluated using a fatigue severity scale and scales for motor and nonmotor symptoms. The levels of three pathological proteins-α-synuclein oligomer, β-a...

Clostridium perfringens iota-toxin consists of two separate proteins identified as a cell binding protein, iota b (Ib), which forms high-molecular-weight complexes on cells generating Na(+)/K(+)-permeable pores through which iota a (Ia), an ADP-ribosyltransferase, presumably enters the cytosol. Identity of the cell receptor and membrane domains involved in Ib binding, oligomer formation, and in...

MOTIVATION The coiled coil is a ubiquitous α-helical protein structure domain that directs and facilitates protein-protein interactions in a wide variety of biological processes. At the protein-sequence level, coiled coils are quite straightforward and readily recognized via the conspicuous heptad repeats of hydrophobic and polar residues. However, structurally they are more complicated, existi...

An improved freeze-fracture electron microscope procedure has been developed and applied to the study of the association of bacteriorhodopsin in large proteoliposomes reconstituted by reverse-phase evaporation with egg lecithin. Due to the improved accuracy and resolution of this procedure, intramembrane particles, the diameter of which (4.5 nm) closely matched that of bacteriorhodopsin monomer...

The gas-phase conformations of poly(styrene) oligomers cationized by Li+, Na+, Cu+, and Ag+ (M+ PSn) were examined using ion mobility experiments and molecular mechanics/ dynamics calculations. M+PSn ions were formed by MALDI and their ion-He collision cross-sections were measured by ion mobility methods. The experimental collision cross-sections of each M+PS n-mer were similar for all four met...

Extracellular-signal regulated kinase (ERK) signaling is critical for memory and tightly regulated by acute environmental stimuli. In Alzheimer disease transgenic models, active ERK is shown to first be increased, then later reduced, but whether these baseline changes reflect disruptions in ERK signaling is less clear. We investigated the influence of the familial Alzheimer's disease transgene ...

The entire nucleotide sequence of nylon oligomer degradative plasmid pOAD2 from Flavobacterium sp. KI723T1 was determined. pOAD2 comprises 45519 bp, with a 66.6 mol% G+C content. The precise loci of the four nylon oligomer degradation genes, namely nylA (6-aminohexanoate-cyclic-dimer hydrolase gene), nylB (6-aminohexanoate-dimer hydrolase), nylB' (a gene having 88% homology to nylB) and nylC (e...

The characterization of amyloid-beta peptide (Aβ) oligomer forms and structures is crucial to the advancement in the field of Alzheimer´s disease (AD). Here we report a critical evaluation of two methods used for this purpose, namely sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), extensively used in the field, and ion mobility coupled to electrospray ionization mass spect...

Control of DNA replication initiation is essential for normal cell growth. A unifying characteristic of DNA replication initiator proteins across the kingdoms of life is their distinctive AAA+ nucleotide-binding domains. The bacterial initiator DnaA assembles into a right-handed helical oligomer built upon interactions between neighbouring AAA+ domains, that in vitro stretches DNA to promote re...