NovP is an S-adenosyl-l-methionine-dependent O-methyltransferase that catalyzes the penultimate step in the biosynthesis of the aminocoumarin antibiotic novobiocin. Specifically, it methylates at 4-OH of the noviose moiety, and the resultant methoxy group is important for the potency of the mature antibiotic: previous crystallographic studies have shown that this group interacts directly with t...

We have investigated the functional derivative of the nonadditive kinetic-energy bifunctional, which appears in the embedding potential that is used in the frozen-density embedding formalism, in the limit that the separation of the subsystems is large. We have derived an exact expression for this kinetic-energy component of the embedding potential and have applied this expression to deduce its ...

BACKGROUND Novobiocin, an aminocoumarin antibiotic, interferes with heat shock protein 90 and hypoxia inducible factor dependent gene expression and thus compromises cell survival. Similar to survival of nucleated cells, erythrocyte survival could be disrupted by eryptosis, the suicidal erythrocyte death characterized by cell shrinkage and by phospholipd scrambling of the cell membrane with pho...

INTRODUCTION Sporothrix schenckii is a thermal dimorphic pathogenic fungus causing a subcutaneous mycosis, sporotrichosis. Nitrocoumarin represents a fluorogenic substrate class where the microbial nitroreductase activity produces several derivatives, already used in several other enzyme assays. The objective of this study was the analysis of 6-nitrocoumarin (6-NC) as a substrate to study the n...

Hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1α) is an important cellular survival protein under hypoxic conditions, regulating the cellular response to low oxygen tension via recruitment of a transcriptional co-activator, p300/CBP. p300/CBP induces expression of multiple genes involved in cell survival, proliferation, angiogenesis, and tumor development. Thus, a strategy to inhibit hypoxic responses in tum...

We report the synthesis and X-ray crystal structures of three acyclic CB[n]-type molecular containers (2a, 2h, 2f) that differ in the charge on their solubilizing groups (SO3(−), OH, NH3(+)). The X-ray crystal structures of compounds 2h and 2f reveal a self-folding of the ArOCH2CH2X wall into the cavity driven by π–π interactions, H-bonds and ion–dipole interactions. The need to reverse this se...

Simocyclinone D8 (SD8), a potent DNA gyrase inhibitor made by Streptomyces antibioticus, is exported from the producing organism by the SimX efflux pump. The expression of simX is under the control of SimR, a member of the TetR family of transcriptional regulators. SimR represses simX transcription by binding to operators in the intergenic region between simR and simX. Previously, we have shown...

In solution, the TATA box binding protein from S. cerevisiae (yTBP) is only minimally oriented when bound to the adenovirus major late promoter (AdMLP) and the yeast CYC1 promoter. At equilibrium, approximately 60% of the complexes are assembled in the orientation observed within crystal structures; 40% are assembled in the opposite orientation. Here we use stopped-flow fluorescence resonance e...

Lignin is an abundant phenylpropanoid polymer produced by the oxidative polymerization of p-hydroxycinnamyl alcohols (monolignols). Lignification, i.e., deposition of lignin, is a defining feature of secondary cell wall formation in vascular plants, and provides an important mechanism for their disease resistance; however, many aspects of the cell wall lignification process remain unclear partl...