Occupational exposure to hydrocarbon solvents has been found to be associated with an increased risk of exocrine pancreatic cancer (EPC), the human tumor with the highest prevalence of K-ras mutations. Ras genes are critical DNA targets for chemical carcinogens. We analysed the relationship between past occupational exposure to hydrocarbon solvents and mutations in codon 12 of the K-ras gene in...

This study evaluated live performance, carcass, abdominal fat and commercial cuts yields of broilers fed corn-soybean meal diets with increasing digestible valine to lysine levels from 21 to 42 days of age. One thousand five hundred and seventy-five Cobb vs Cobb 500 male broilers were raised with the same commercial mash feed until 21 days of age. Seven treatments with 9 replications of 25 bird...

The potency of L-valine as an inhibitor of Zea mays acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS) is increased more than 8000-fold on conversion to its N-phthalyl anilide derivative which is active at 2 microM. The D-valine, alpha-aminobutyric acid, isoleucine and phenylalanine analogs are 11- to 43-fold less potent, and similar N-phthalyl anilide derivatives of other branched-chain amino acids are essentia...

4-Valine-oxytocin and 1-deamino-4-valine-oxytocin, analogues of the posterior pituitary hormone containing a valine residue in place of the glutamine residue in position 4, have been synthesized by the p-nitrophenyl ester method of peptide synthesis and tested for pharmacological activity. The 4-valine-oxytocin possesses 140 units per mg of oxytocic activity and 240 units per mg of avian vasode...

Characterization of solvent preferences of proteins is essential to the understanding of solvent effects on protein structure and stability. Although it is generally believed that solvent preferences at distinct loci of a protein surface may differ, quantitative characterization of local protein solvation has remained elusive. In this study, we show that local solvation preferences can be quant...

Control of the regulatory enzyme threonine deaminase from Escherichia coli is achieved by isoleucine inhibition and valine activation. The mechanism by which these heterotropic effectors regulate the enzyme was investigated by measuring the binding of isoleucine and valine by spectroscopic, kinetic, calorimetric and equilibrium dialysis techniques. The addition of isoleucine or valine to threon...

The L-valine production strain of Escherichia coli was constructed by rational metabolic engineering and stepwise improvement based on transcriptome analysis and gene knockout simulation of the in silico genome-scale metabolic network. Feedback inhibition of acetohydroxy acid synthase isoenzyme III by L-valine was removed by site-directed mutagenesis, and the native promoter containing the tran...

Several simulation methods are currently in use to study peptide and protein folding. They can be classified in three groups depending on how the solvent is treated. At the simplest level, the solvent is ignored. At a second level, solvent effects are implicitly represented in the atomic interaction function. At the third level, solvent degrees of freedom are treated explicitly. We have perform...

The effects of solvent on molecular processes such as excited state relaxation and photochemical reaction often occurs in a nonequilibrium regime. Dynamic processes such as these can be simulated using excited statemolecular dynamics. In this work, we describe methods of simulating nonequilibrium solvent effects in excited statemolecular dynamics using linear-response time-dependent density fun...

BACKGROUND The branched chain alcohol isobutanol exhibits superior physicochemical properties as an alternative biofuel. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae naturally produces low amounts of isobutanol as a by-product during fermentations, resulting from the catabolism of valine. As S. cerevisiae is widely used in industrial applications and can easily be modified by genetic engineering, this mi...