Cation diffusion facilitators (CDF) are part of a highly conserved protein family that maintains cellular divalent cation homeostasis in all domains of life. CDF's were shown to be involved in several human diseases, such as Type-II diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. In this work, we employed a multi-disciplinary approach to study the activation mechanism of the CDF protein family. For th...

The "protein only" hypothesis states that the infectious agent causing transmissible spongiform encephalopathies is a conformational isomer of PrP, a host protein predominantly expressed in brain, and is strongly supported by many lines of evidence. Prion diseases are so far unique among conformational diseases in that they are transmissible, not only experimentally but also by natural routes, ...

We present a study of the dynamics of protein aggregation using a common path heterodyne Bloch surface wave sensing scheme. We demonstrate the ability to detect, during thermal incubation, the early events linked to the aggregation of proteins related to conformational diseases. Alzheimer's amyloid-β 1-42 is used to demonstrate the efficiency of the method. A model based on elementary interacti...

protein aggregation is thought to be the pathological driving force responsible for neurodegenerative disorders such as alzheimer’s, parkinson’s, huntington’s, frontotemporal dementia, dementia with lewy bodies and prion diseases, however, it is not yet clear whether, or to what extent, the misfolded proteins are the cause of the diseases rather than the consequences. the aggregated proteins th...

Biofunctional peptide FNIII14, which is derived from the 14th fibronectin (FN) type III-like (FN-III) repeat of FN molecule, capable inhibiting cell adhesion to extracellular matrix (ECM). This functional site usually buried within molecular structure FN, but can be exposed by conformational changes and proteolytic cleavage. Peptide FNIII14 induce a change in β1-integrin active inactive form, c...

the conformational behavior of monosubstituted tri-methylsilyle ethynyl derivative of cal ix[4]arene as a newgeneration of caliarene was compared with tetra alkylated calyx[4]arene. the most important conformationalphenomena in these compounds which are pinched cone interconversion process were done by semi-empiricalmethod and ab initio calculations with gaussian 98w programming.

Prion diseases (e.g. ‘mad cow’ disease in cattle, chronic wasting disease in deer and elk, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans) have been a major public health concern affecting humans and almost all animals. However, dogs are strongly resistant to prion diseases. Recently, through transgenic techniques, it was reported that the single (surface) residue D159 is sufficient to confer protection a...

Protein misfolding and aggregation are responsible for a large number of diseases called protein conformational diseases or disorders that include Alzheimer׳s disease, Huntington׳s diseases, Prion related encephalopathies and type-II diabetes (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/35041139) (Kopito and Ron, 2000) [1]. A variety of studies have shown that some small organic molecules, known as osmolytes hav...