Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) an innate immune sensor for microbial RNA, erroneously responds to self-derived RNA. To avoid autoimmune responses, TLR7 is suggested to be silenced until the N-terminal half of the TLR7 ectodomain (TLR7N) is cleaved off. Resultant truncated TLR7 (TLR7C) is thought to signal microbial RNA. We here show that TLR7N remains associated with TLR7C through a disulfide bond...

The intact three dimensional structure of proteins is essential for their biological function. Important to the stability of the tertiary structure are intra-molecular disulfide bonds. The structure of proteins is dynamic and important biological processes like protein-protein interactions or enzyme-substrate binding can lead to a change in the tertiary structure, which may result in the cleava...

Most proteins in nature are chemically modified after they are made to control how, when, and where they function. The 3 core features of proteins are posttranslationally modified: amino acid side chains can be modified, peptide bonds can be cleaved or isomerized, and disulfide bonds can be cleaved. Cleavage of peptide bonds is a major mechanism of protein control in the circulation, as exempli...

The influence of the inductive effect of modifications in the disulfide bridge in oxytocin analogs on the cleavage of the neighboring peptidic bond was studied. A correlation between the inductive constant of the group in the disulfide bridge and the particular fragment ion abundance was observed.

QSOX1 (quiescin sulfhydryl oxidase 1) efficiently catalyses the insertion of disulfide bonds into a wide range of proteins. The enzyme is mechanistically well characterized, but its subcellular location and the identity of its protein substrates remain ill-defined. The function of QSOX1 is likely to involve disulfide formation in proteins entering the secretory pathway or outside the cell. In t...

The mechanism of cyanide cleavage of peptide bonds involving the cystine amino group has been shown to involve scission of the disulfide bond to yield a sulfhydryl and a thiocyano group. In pH ranges below 8, the latter cyclizes to produce an acyliminothiazolidine moiety on the peptide chain. This product is unstable and hydrolyzes spontaneously to effect cleavage of the peptide link on the cys...

Direct characterization of peptides with multiple disulfide bonds by mass spectrometry is highly desirable. In this study, electron transfer dissociation (ETD) of peptide disulfide regio-isomers was studied using model peptides containing two intrachain disulfide bonds. ETD provided rich sequence information (c/z ions) even for the backbone region under the coverage of two disulfide bonds. This...

The identification of disulfide bonds provides critical information regarding the structure and function of a protein and is a key aspect in understanding signaling cascades in biological systems. Recent proteomic approaches using digestion enzymes have facilitated the characterization of disulfide-bonds and/or oxidized products from cysteine residues, although these methods have limitations in...