The inhibition of the enzyme dipeptidyl-peptidase IV (DPP-IV) is an effective pharmacotherapeutic approach for the management of type 2 diabetes. Recent findings have suggested that dietary proteins, including bovine α-lactalbumin, could be precursors of peptides able to inhibit DPP-IV. However, information on the location of active peptide sequences within the proteins is far from being compre...

Stress conditions can destabilize proteins, promoting them to unfold and adopt intermediately folded states. Partially folded protein intermediates are unstable and prone to aggregation down off-folding pathways leading to the formation of either amorphous or amyloid fibril aggregates. The sHsp (small heat-shock protein) αB-crystallin acts as a molecular chaperone to prevent both amorphous and ...

BACKGROUND Cognitive performance often declines under chronic stress exposure. The negative effect of chronic stress on performance may be mediated by reduced brain serotonin function. The uptake of the serotonin precursor tryptophan into the brain depends on nutrients that influence the availability of tryptophan by changing the ratio of plasma tryptophan to the sum of the other large neutral ...

Iron absorption from infant formula is relatively low. α-Lactalbumin and casein-glycomacropeptide have been suggested to enhance mineral absorption. We therefore assessed the effect of α-lactalbumin and casein-glycomacropeptide on iron absorption from infant formula in healthy term infants. Thirty-one infants were randomly assigned to receive 1 of 3 formulas (4 mg iron/L, 13.1 g protein/L) from...

The equilibrium and kinetics of the unfolding and refolding of authentic and recombinant human alpha-lactalbumin, the latter of which had an extra methionine residue at the N-terminus, were studied by circular dichroism spectroscopy, and the results were compared with the results for bovine and goat alpha-lactalbumins obtained in our previous studies. As observed in the bovine and goat proteins...

Background: Formula-fed infants have growth and plasma amino acid patterns different from those of breastfed infants. Objective: -Lactalbumin is a major protein in human milk, and the addition of bovine -lactalbumin to infant formula has been proposed to modify the plasma amino acid pattern of the recipient infant, possibly allowing a reduction in the protein content of the formula, which may a...

BACKGROUND Formula-fed infants have growth and plasma amino acid patterns different from those of breastfed infants. OBJECTIVE alpha-Lactalbumin is a major protein in human milk, and the addition of bovine alpha-lactalbumin to infant formula has been proposed to modify the plasma amino acid pattern of the recipient infant, possibly allowing a reduction in the protein content of the formula, w...

a-Lactalbumin was purified from a whey protein fraction of the milk of the red-necked wallaby (Macropus rufogrisem). The complete amino acid sequence was determined from the results of automatic sequenator analyses of the intact protein, the three cyanogen bromide fragments, and of peptides generated from the larger, COOH-terminal CNBr fragment by digestion with trypsin or staphylococcal protea...

The GroEL-GroES is an essential molecular chaperon system that assists protein folding in cell. Binding of various substrate proteins to GroEL is one of the key aspects in GroEL-assisted protein folding. Small peptides may mimic segments of the substrate proteins in contact with GroEL and allow detailed structural analysis of the interactions. A model peptide SBP has been shown to bind to a reg...

Malignant brain tumors present a major therapeutic challenge because no selective or efficient treatment is available. Here, we demonstrate that intratumoral administration of human -lactalbumin made lethal to tumor cells (HAMLET) prolongs survival in a human glioblastoma (GBM) xenograft model, by selective induction of tumor cell apoptosis. HAMLET is a protein-lipid complex that is formed from...