The enzyme kinetics of hevamine, a chitinase from the rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis, were studied in detail with a new enzyme assay. In this assay, the enzyme reaction products were derivatized by reductive coupling to a chromophore. Products were separated by HPLC and the amount of product was calculated by peak integration. Penta-N-acetylglucosamine (penta-nag) and hexa-N-acetylglucosamine (...

NAG-1/GDF15 is a TGF- β superfamily member with poorly characterized biological activity proposed to inhibit inflammatory cytokine production. Transgenic mice expressing human NAG-1/GDF15 (NAG-1 (Tg/Lox) ) are leaner with lower body weight and are resistant to chemically or genetically induced intestinal tumors. Because of the link between obesity, inflammation, and cancer, we examined whether ...

BACKGROUND Silver has a long history of use in medicine as an antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory agent. Silver nanoparticles (NAg) offer the possibility to control the formation oral biofilms through the use of nanoparticles with biocidal, anti-adhesive, and delivery abilities. This study aims to evaluate the antibacterial effect of resin luting cements with and without NAg, and their influenc...

We aimed to characterize microbiota of the gastric mucosa as it progress to intestinal type of cancer. Study included five patients each of non-atrophic gastritis (NAG), intestinal metaplasia (IM) and intestinal-type gastric cancer (GC). Gastric tissue was obtained and DNA extracted for microbiota analyses using the microarray G3 PhyloChip. Bacterial diversity ranged from 8 to 57, and steadily ...

N-Acetyl-beta-D-glucosaminidase (NAG) is a sensitive indicator of renal damage. When the urinary NAG levels of 60 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were measured a highly significant difference was detected between the mean urinary NAG excretion of the patients with RA (341 +/- 294-92 nmol h-1 mg creatinine-1) and that of 60 matched controls (67-53 +/- 16-93 nmol h-1 mg creatinine-1). In ...

OBJECTIVE The NLRP3 inflammasome plays an important regulatory role in obesity-induced insulin resistance. NSAID activated gene-1 (NAG-1) is a divergent member of the TGF-β superfamily. NAG-1 Tg mice are resistant to dietary- and genetic-induced obesity and have improved insulin sensitivity. The objective was to examine whether NLRP3 inflammasome activity is associated with this observed phenot...

In their letter Hiller et al. mention the conservation test that was performed in [1] and the more recent results of Akerman and Mandel-Gutfreund [2]. To explain our interpretation of these results we first briefly describe our rough hypothesis for the origin of the bulk of NAGNAG splice variations. We believe that in general the splicing machinery splices invariantly at the first AG that follo...

Figure 2. The trajectories of CM, NAG, and SGD are shown. Although the value of the momentum is identical for both experiments, CM exhibits oscillations along the high-curvature directions, while NAG exhibits no such oscillations. The global minimizer of the objective is at (0,0). The red curve shows gradient descent with the same learning rate as NAG and CM, the blue curve shows NAG, and the g...

diabetes mellitus. Once diabetic nephropathy is well established , attempts to modify the relentless progression of the disease have been essentially unsuccessful . Thus, indicators are needed to identify the early structural and functional changes of diabetic nephropathy which may be reversed by strict blood glucose control. A growing body of evidence reveals that a persistent elevation of uri...

N-acetyl-ƒÀ-glucosaminidase (NAG, EC 3.2. 1.30) is an enzyme which catalyzes glycoproteins, glycolipids and glycosaminoglycans. This enzyme is widely distributed in a variety of tissues and fluids of mammals. Until now, NAG has been purified from various organs such as human placenta1), bovine spleen2), horse kidney3) and mouse submandibular gland4), and its enzymatic properties have been repor...