Plant bioactive metabolites play a pivotal role in protection against environmental stresses and offer great potential for nutraceutical exploitation. In this sense, halophytes present an exceptional opportunity sustainable saline agriculture since they can massively accumulate under stressful conditions. We investigated the responses of halophyte Crithmum maritimum to increasing salinity, nutr...

The stable free radical 2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-N-oxyl-4-amino-4-carboxylic acid (TOAC) is the only spin labeled amino acid that has been used to date to successfully label peptide sequences for structural studies. However, severe difficulty in coupling the subsequent amino acid has been the most serious shortcoming of this paramagnetic marker. This problem stems from the low nucleophilic...

Intestinal barrier integrity and function are compromised during exertional heat stress (EHS) potentially leading to consequences that range from minor gastrointestinal (GI) disturbances fatal outcomes in stroke or septic shock. This mini-review provides a concise discussion of nutritional interventions may protect against intestinal permeability EHS suggests physiological mechanisms responsibl...

Most work on protective immunity against the pre-erythrocytic stages of malaria has focused on induction of antibodies that prevent sporozoite invasion of hepatocytes, and CD8(+) T-cell responses that eliminate infected hepatocytes. We recently reported that immunization of A/J mice with an 18-amino-acid synthetic linear peptide from Plasmodium yoelii sporozoite surface protein 2 (SSP2) in Tite...

Polyclonal sera obtained from African children with acute measles were used to screen a panel of 15-mer overlapping peptides representing the sequence of measles virus (MV) fusion (F) protein. An immunodominant antigenic region from the F protein (p32; amino acids 388 to 402) was found to represent an amino acid sequence within the highly conserved cysteine-rich domain of the F protein of param...

Using an Escherichia coli-grown plasmid vector encoding a fragment of thioredoxin (Trx) fused to a central region (amino acids 128 to 229) of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) (Long strain) G protein, we employed site-directed mutagenesis to investigate the importance of selected amino acids to vaccine efficacy. Mice were immunized with a total of 10 wild-type or mutant Trx-G proteins and c...

In Escherichia coli, amino acid starvation results in the coordinate inhibition of a variety of metabolic activities, including fatty acid and phospholipid biosynthesis. By using primer extension analysis we identified the fabH promoter responsible for transcription of the fabH, fabD and fabG genes encoding fatty acid biosynthetic enzymes. The response of the fabH promoter to amino acid starvat...

A polymer-assisted solution-phase (PASP) synthesis of lead structure analogues ready for biological testing without the demand for chromatographic purification is described. Carboxylic acids are coupled to the Kenner or Ellman safety catch linker, respectively, activated by methylation or cyanomethylation and subsequently transferred to the 2'-amino group of the 2'-amino-2'-deoxyadenosine scaff...

In this study, the ability of lithium nitrite and amino alcohol inhibitors to provide corrosion protection to reinforcing steel was investigated. Two types of specimens-reinforcing steel and a reinforced concrete prism that were exposed to chloride ion levels resembling the chloride attack environment-were prepared. An autoclave accelerated corrosion test was then conducted. The variables teste...

Recent work has identified a lysosomal protein that transports neutral amino acids (LYAAT1). We now show that LYAAT1 mediates H+ cotransport with a stoichiometry of 1 H+/1 amino acid, consistent with a role in the active efflux of amino acids from lysosomes. In neurons, however, LYAAT1 localizes to axonal processes as well as lysosomes. In axons LYAAT1 fails to colocalize with synaptic markers....