P-glycoprotein (Pgp) is a plasma membrane protein whose overexpression confers multidrug resistance to tumor cells by extruding amphipathic natural product cytotoxic drugs using the energy of ATP. An elucidation of the catalytic cycle of Pgp would help design rational strategies to combat multidrug resistance and to further our understanding of the mechanism of ATP-binding cassette transporters...

DNA catalysts (deoxyribozymes) for a variety of reactions have been identified by in vitro selection. However, for certain reactions this identification has not been achieved. One important example is DNA-catalyzed amide hydrolysis, for which a previous selection experiment instead led to DNA-catalyzed DNA phosphodiester hydrolysis. Subsequent efforts in which the selection strategy deliberatel...

F1-ATPase (F1) is a rotary motor protein that can efficiently convert chemical energy to mechanical work of rotation via fine coordination of its conformational motions and reaction sequences. Compared with reactant binding and product release, the ATP hydrolysis has relatively little contributions to the torque and chemical energy generation. To scrutinize possible roles of ATP hydrolysis, we ...

Semiempirical molecular orbital calculations have been performed for the first step in the alkaline hydrolysis of the neutral benzoylester of cocaine. Successes, failures, and limitations of these calculations are reviewed. A PM3 calculated transition state structure is compared with the PM3 calculated structure for the hapten used to induce catalytic antibodies for the hydrolysis of cocaine. I...

The catalytic properties of peptides containing histidine, cysteine and aspartic acid in ester hydrolysis were studied. Saturation kinetics were found for the reaction of p-nitrophenyl acetate (NPA) with Z-His-Ala-Asp-Gly-Cys-NH2 and Z-His-Ala-Gly-Cly-Cys-NH2. The Brönsted equation for the hydrolysis of tert-butyloxcarbonyl-L-alanine-p-nitrophenylester (Bos-Ala-ONp) catalyzed by simple imidazol...

Creating efficient artificial catalysts that can compete with biocatalysis has been an enduring challenge which has yet to be met. Reported herein is the synthesis and characterization of a series of zinc complexes designed to catalyze the hydrolysis of phosphate diesters. By introducing a hydrated aldehyde into the ligand we achieve turnover for DNA-like substrates which, combined with ligand ...

Nowadays, a lot of efforts have been applied to find an appropriate catalyst for generating hydrogen from NaBH4. Hence in the current study, various nanostructures of TiO2 were employed to obtain an insight into how the different support catalysts effect on the hydrolysis rate of NaBH4. For this aim, disordered filaments (DF-NTs) and ordered free-standing TiO2 nanotubes (FS-NTs) were fabricated...

The Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1(Xrs2) (MRN/X) complex is critical for the repair and signaling of DNA double strand breaks. The catalytic core of MRN/X comprised of the Mre11 nuclease and Rad50 adenosine triphosphatase (ATPase) active sites dimerizes through association between the Rad50 ATPase catalytic domains and undergoes extensive conformational changes upon ATP binding. This ATP-bound 'closed' state...