The pathways controlling cilium biogenesis in different cell types have not been fully elucidated. We recently identified peptidylglycine α-amidating monooxygenase (PAM), an enzyme required for generating amidated bioactive signaling peptides, in Chlamydomonas and mammalian cilia. Here, we show that PAM is required for the normal assembly of motile and primary cilia in Chlamydomonas, planaria a...

The crustacean hyperglycemic hormone (CHH) peptide family includes four types of neuropeptide in decapod and isopod crustaceans, and the ion-transport peptide in orthopteran insects. To identify a new member of this family in Insecta, a PCR-based search for cDNAs encoding CHH-family peptides was carried out in the silkworm Bombyx mori. A cDNA, named BmCHHL (Bombyx mori CHH-like protein), with a...

ApoLp-Gln-II (or apoA-II), one of the two major apolipoprotein components of human plasma high density lipoproteins, was subjected to enzymatic and nonenzymatic digestion with trypsin and cyanogen bromide. The individual peptides were isolated to homogeneity by chromatography on DEAE-cellulose, Cm-Sephadex, Sephadex G-100, Sephadex G-75, preparative thin layer plates, and by peptide mapping. Is...

Peptidoglycan muropeptides, potent proinflammatory components, are amidated in Staphylococcus aureus for unknown reasons. To study whether this modification may modulate proinflammatory capacity, cytokine induction by isogenic S. aureus strains with different amidation levels and by synthetic amidated/nonamidated muramyldipeptides was evaluated. However, amidation did not significantly affect c...

A number of lentiviral vector systems have been developed for gene delivery and therapy by eliminating and/or modifying viral genetic elements. However, all lentiviral vector systems derived from HIV-1 must have a viral packaging signal sequence, Psi (Ψ), which is placed downstream of 5' long terminal repeat in a transgene plasmid to effectively package and deliver transgene mRNA. In this study...

Abstract Synthetic peptide pools are used in experimental and clinical immunology, for example, cancer immunotherapy. The analytical characterization is challenging due to the similarity of peptides, usually only a pre-characterization single peptides performed. However, regular quality control mix would be highly desirable. Therefore, high performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass...

Here we report two novel 17-mer amidated linear peptides (TsAP-1 and TsAP-2) whose structures were deduced from cDNAs cloned from a venom-derived cDNA library of the Brazilian yellow scorpion, Tityus serrulatus. Both mature peptides were structurally-characterised following their location in chromatographic fractions of venom and synthetic replicates of each were subjected to a range of biologi...

Ribosome-bound peptides were prepared from rabbit reticulocytes incubated in a reaction mixture that contained all essential amino acids except tryptophan. The peptides were fractionated by Sephadex gel filtration and the N-termini of these peptides were examined. Longer uncompleted hemoglobin chains (larger than 30 amino acids) had unblocked valine at the N-terminal position. In contrast, shor...