Integral membrane proteins from over 20 ubiquitous families of channels, secondary carriers, and primary active transporters were analyzed for average size differences between homologues from the three domains of life: Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya. The results showed that while eucaryotic homologues are consistently larger than their bacterial counterparts, archaeal homologues are significant...

Introduction For many years, studies of ion channels and transport proteins have bred distinct fields with divergent approaches, mindsets and methods. ‘ion channelologists’ focused on gating and permeation, and mumbled about obscure kinetic schemes, whereas ‘transporterologists’ studied substrate coupling and transport kinetics, and mumbled about other obscure kinetic schemes. practitioners of ...

We investigated phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent phosphotransferase system enzyme II activities for sucrose and glucose in Streptococcus mutans 6715g. Two integral membrane proteins, enzyme IIscr and enzyme IIglc, each specific for its sugar substrate, sucrose or glucose, were identified by their abilities to catalyze specific sugar:sugar-phosphate exchange reactions. Some of the properties of the...

This article focuses on bacteriophage P4 as a potential peptide display phage by exploring the possibility of using the P4 capsid decoration component, Psu, as a peptide carrier protein. Psu is non-essential for P4 growth but it enhances the stability of the P4 capsid by binding to its exterior. We have constructed a unique SacI cloning site in the beginning of the psu gene. This site changes t...

The mammalian lens generates an internal microcirculation that maintains transparency in the avascular lens. Significant progress has been made in characterizing the membrane transport proteins associated with this circulation. By combining physiological and molecular evidence, a more comprehensive understanding of normal lens function and cataractogenesis is emerging.

Several structures of membrane transport proteins in complex with mechanistically-relevant ligands, determined by serial femtosecond crystallography of microcrystals at an X-ray free-electron source source, are presented. These results, including investigation of approaches to data quality assessment and refinement from low-redundancy data, indicate the feasibility of using this approach for li...

Nanoencapsulation is commonly used to improve nutritional properties, rheological behavior and flavor profile of phytochemicals. The particles commonly utilized to encapsulate the functional ingredients are natural polymers such as polysaccharides and proteins. There is an ever-growing interest for use of polysaccharides to encapsulate hydrophobic phytochemicals like curcumin. Curcumin is a pol...