Members of the Flaviviridae encode a serine proteinase termed NS3 that is responsible for processing at several sites in the viral polyproteins. In this report, we show that the NS3 proteinase of the pestivirus bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) (NADL strain) is required for processing at nonstructural (NS) protein sites 3/4A, 4A/4B, 4B/5A, and 5A/5B but not for cleavage at the junction between...

Thrombin is produced by the ordered action of prothrombinase on two cleavage sites in prothrombin. Meizothrombin, a proteinase precursor of thrombin, is a singly cleaved species that accumulates abundantly as an intermediate. We now show that covalent linkage of the N-terminal propiece with the proteinase domain in meizothrombin imbues it with exceptionally zymogen-like character. Meizothrombin...

An extracellular proteinase produced by the filamentous fungus Scedosporium apiospermum has been purified and characterized. Initially, in vitro conditions for enzyme synthesis were investigated. The highest yield of enzyme production was obtained when the fungus was cultivated in modified Czapek-Dox liquid medium supplemented with 0.1% bacteriological peptone and 1% (w/v) glucose as the nitrog...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa elastase rapidly inactivates alpha 1-proteinase inhibitor by splitting its Pro-357-Met-358 peptide bond. The present study was aimed at testing whether this reaction takes place in the presence of leukocyte elastase. To this end was added alpha 1-proteinase inhibitor to a mixture of the two elastases, and we performed the following assays: (i) measurement of the residual ...

Cysteine proteinases are hypothesized to be important virulence factors of Entamoeba histolytica, the causative agent of amebic dysentery and liver abscesses. The release of a histolytic cysteine proteinase from E. histolytica correlates with the pathogenicity of both axenic strains and recent clinical isolates as determined by clinical history of invasive disease, zymodeme analysis, and cytopa...

Wilms tumor gene product WT1 and proteinase 3 are overexpressed antigens in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), against which cytotoxic T lymphocytes can be elicited in vitro and in murine models. We performed this study to investigate whether WT1and proteinase 3-specific CD8 T cells spontaneously occur in AML patients. T cells recognizing HLA-A2.1binding epitopes from WT1 or proteinase 3 could be de...

The serine proteinase gene (sep) in Aspergillus flavus was disrupted by homologous recombination with a hygromycin resistance gene as the marker. The gene-disrupted mutant GR-2 contained a single-copy insertion of the marker gene and did not express the sep gene. Serine proteinase activity, 36-kDa protein labeled by 3H-diisopropylfluorophosphate, and immunologically detectable proteinase were n...

Human breast cancer cell lines, as well as transformed mammary epithelial cells (HBL-100) and growth-stimulated normal breast epithelial cells showed positive cytochemical reaction with the proteinase substrate 2-(N-benzyloxycarbonyl-L-arginyl-L-arginylamido)-4-methoxynapht halene, in the presence of 5-nitrosalicylaldehyde. The reaction product, small fluorescent granules, was distributed throu...