Objective(s): Somatostatin receptor-positive neuroendocrine tumors have been targeted using various peptide analogs radiolabeled with therapeutic radionuclides for years. The better biomedical properties of radioantagonists as higher tumor uptake make these radioligands more attractive than agonists for somatostatin receptor-targeted radionuclide therapy. In this study...

Plasmin exposure modulates platelet aggregation responses, but a direct effect of plasmin on the platelet fibrinogen receptor, glycoprotein IIb/IIIa (GPIIb/IIIa), has never been conclusively shown in a plasma milieu. To examine this issue, we incubated platelets in platelet-rich plasma with plasmin and measured the effect of this treatment on platelet aggregation, fibrinogen binding, and the st...

The mixed copper- and zinc-binding proteins, with mol.wt. of approx. 12000, induced in rat liver after injection of copper were isolated and characterized as metallothioneins. Three separate forms were obtained, with 7-11% total metal in the protein, equivalent to 2.6-1.6 cysteine residues/metal atom.

Cysteine residues are known to perform essential functions within proteins, including binding to various metal ions. In particular, cysteine residues can display high affinity toward zinc ions (Zn2+), and these resulting Zn2+-cysteine complexes are critical mediators of protein structure, catalysis and regulation. Recent advances in both experimental and theoretical platforms have accelerated t...

Detection of similarity is particularly difficult for small proteins and thus connections between many of them remain unnoticed. Structure and sequence analysis of several metal-binding proteins reveals unexpected similarities in structural domains classified as different protein folds in SCOP and suggests unification of seven folds that belong to two protein classes. The common motif, termed t...

Peptides in an extract of skin from the agnathan Petromyzon marinus (sea lamprey) were purified by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and characterized by Edman degradation. The primary structure of a cysteine- and arginine-rich peptide (termed lamprey corticostatin-related peptide [LCRP]) was established as Cys-Pro-Cys-Gly-Arg-Arg-Arg-Cys-Cys-Val-Arg-Gly-Leu-Asn-Val-Tyr-Cys-...

objective: recently, phage display libraries have received enormous attention for identification and isolation of pharmaceutical molecules with diagnostic and therapeutic properties. peptide libraries are known as one of the most important and widely used types of phage display libraries. in the current study, we aimed to screen the ph.d.tm-7 phage display peptide library through biopanning for...

The transition of alpha-helical or unfolded peptides and proteins to beta-sheets and the subsequent amyloid formation are characteristic for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. The interactions of amyloidogenic peptides with surfaces such as biological membranes are considered to play an important role regarding the onset of secondary structure changes. In our pr...

The HECT-containing E3 ubiquitin ligase Itch mediates the degradation of several proteins, including p63 and p73, involved in cell specification and fate. Itch contains four WW domains, which are essential for recognition on the target substrate, which contains a short proline-rich sequence. Several signaling complexes containing these domains have been associated with human diseases such as mu...