Imiquimod has been identified as a potent antiviral and antitumor agent in animal models. The biological activity associated with imiquimod has been attributed to its induction of interferon (IFN)-alpha. The present studies evaluated imiquimod administered orally for its ability to stimulate production of IFN and other cytokines in mice. The cytokine profile induced by imiquimod was compared wi...

Hydrogels and, in particular, supramolecular hydrogels show promising properties for application in regenerative medicine because of their ability to adapt to the natural environment these materials are brought into. However, only few studies focus on the structure-property relationships in supramolecular hydrogels. Here, we study in detail both the structure and the mechanical properties of su...

A straightforward enzymatic protocol for converting regular DNA into pseudo-complementary DNA could improve the performance of oligonucleotide microarrays by generating readily hybridizable structure-free targets. Here we screened several highly destabilizing analogs of G and C for one that could be used with 2-aminoadenine (nA) and 2-thiothymine (sT) to generate structure-free DNA that is full...

Lack of target specificity by existing matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) inhibitors has hindered antimetastatic cancer drug discovery. Inhibitors that bind to noncatalytic sites of MMPs and disrupt protease signaling function have the potential to be more specific and selective. In this work, compounds that target the hemopexin (PEX) domain of MMP-9 were identified using an in silico docking appro...

The ribG gene at the 5' end of the riboflavin operon of Bacillus subtilis and a reading frame at 442 kb on the Escherichia coli chromosome (subsequently designated ribD) show similarity with deoxycytidylate deaminase and with the RIB7 gene of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The ribG gene of B. subtilis and the ribD gene of E. coli were expressed in recombinant E. coli strains and were shown to code f...

The MRN (Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1)-ATM (ataxia-telangiectasia mutated) pathway is essential for sensing and signaling from DNA double-strand breaks. The MRN complex acts as a DNA damage sensor, maintains genome stability during DNA replication, promotes homology-dependent DNA repair and activates ATM. MRN is essential for cell viability, which has limited functional studies of the complex. Small-molecu...

Random copolymers consisting of n-butyl acrylate backbones with quadruple hydrogenbonding side chains based on 2-ureido-4[1H]-pyrimidinone (UPy) have been synthesized via controlled radical polymerization and postpolymerization functionalization. Through this synthetic strategy highUPymonomer content (15 mol %) can be reached while maintaining low polydispersity and excellent control over molec...

The charge density distribution in deuterated cytosine monohydrate [4-(2H2)-amino-2(1H)-(1-2H)-pyrimidinone], C4H2D3N3O.D2O, Mr = 134.15, monoclinic, P2(1)/c, a = 7.714 (1), b = 9.825 (1), c = 7.506 (2) A, beta = 100.52 (1) degrees, Z = 4, has been determined from 1432 X-ray reflections [sin theta/lambda less than 1.15 A-1, Mo K alpha, lambda = 0.7093 (1) A] collected at 82 (2) K. Least-squares...

Microsatellite repeats consisting of dinucleotide sequences are ubiquitous in the human genome and have proven useful for linkage analysis, positional cloning and forensic identification purposes. In this study, the potential of utilizing the ligase detection reaction for the analysis of such microsatellite repeat sequences was investigated. Initially, the fidelity of thermostable DNA ligases w...