Platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents induce the formation of crosslinks in DNA, which are accepted as being responsible for the cytotoxicity of these agents. In this study, we used a modification of the alkaline comet assay for detection of the presence of DNA crosslinks in vitro caused by cisplatin, and in peripheral lymphocytes of patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma undergoing chemo...

Crosslinks and molecular motors play an important role in the organization of cytoskeletal filament networks. Here we incorporate the effect of crosslinks into our model of polar motor-filament organization [Phys. Rev. E 71, 050901 (2005)], through suppressing the relative sliding of filaments in the course of motor-mediated alignment. We show that this modification leads to a nontrivial macros...

Here we made an attempt to obtain partial structural information on the topology of multispan integral membrane proteins of yeast by isolating organellar membranes, removing peripheral membrane proteins at pH 11.5 and introducing chemical crosslinks between vicinal amino acids either using homo- or hetero-bifunctional crosslinkers. Proteins were digested with specific proteases and the products...

The folding rates of two-state proteins have been found to correlate with simple measures of native-state topology. The most prominent among these measures is the relative contact order (CO), which is the average CO, or localness, of all contacts in the native protein structure, divided by the chain length. Here, we test whether such measures can be generalized to capture the effect of chain cr...

In fully transient, mussel-inspired hydrogels, metal-coordinate complexes form supramolecular crosslinks, which offer tunable viscoelastic properties and mechanical reversibility. The metal-coordination complexation that comprises the crosslinks can take on tris-, bis-, mono-, free-state modalities (3, 2, 1, or 0 ligands per ion, respectively). Although prior work has established relationships ...

Exposure to toxic chemicals, especially chemotherapeutic drugs, may induce several DNA lesions, including DNA interstrand crosslinks. These crosslinks are considered toxic lesions to the dividing cells since they can induce mutations, chromosomal rearrangements, and cell death. Many DNA interstrand crosslinks lesions can be generated by platinum-based chemotherapeutic agents. Satraplatin is a n...

The binding of the antitumor drug cis-dichlorodiammineplatinum(II) and its inactive trans isomer with the nucleosome core particle has been investigated. Kinetic studies show that platinum binding increases with incubation time, from a few bound platinum atoms per nucleosome core in the first 0.5 hr to 40-50 after 40 hr. There is no crosslinking or dissociation of nucleosome cores upon platinum...

Organisms like Dictyostelium discoideum, often referred to as DNA damage "extremophiles", can survive exposure to extremely high doses of radiation and DNA crosslinking agents. These agents form highly toxic DNA crosslinks that cause extensive DNA damage. However, little is known about how Dictyostelium and the other "extremophiles" can tolerate and repair such large numbers of DNA crosslinks. ...