Although engineered LAGLIDADG homing endonucleases (LHEs) are finding increasing applications in biotechnology, their generation remains a challenging, industrial-scale process. As new single-chain LAGLIDADG nuclease scaffolds are identified, however, an alternative paradigm is emerging: identification of an LHE scaffold whose native cleavage site is a close match to a desired target sequence, ...

objective(s):brucellosis, especially caused by brucella melitensis, remains one of the most common zoonotic diseases worldwide with more than 500,000 human cases reported annually. the commonly used live attenuated vaccine in ovine brucellosis prophylaxis is b. melitensis rev1. but due to different problems caused by the administration of this vaccine, a protective subunit vaccine against b. me...

Depletion of the SlpA protein from the bacterial surface greatly reduced the adhesion of Lactobacillus brevis ATCC 8287 to the human intestinal cell lines Caco-2 and Intestine 407, the endothelial cell line EA-hy926, and the urinary bladder cell line T24, as well as immobilized fibronectin. For functional analysis of the SlpA surface protein, different regions of the slpA gene were expressed as...

Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease in human and animals. Brucella melitensis is one of the most pathogenic species of Brucella in goat and sheep. Omp31 is an outer membrane protein of Brucella that acts as an immunogenic protein. Cytokines are glycoproteins with low molecular weight that play the role of an immune adjuvant and regulate immune responses. Interleukin-2 is one of the most important...

We constructed chimeric proteins that consist of two green fluorescent protein variants, EBFP and EGFP, connected by flexible linkers, (GGGGS)n (n = 3 approximately 4), and helical linkers, (EAAAK)n (n = 2 approximately 5). The conformations of the chimeric proteins with the various linkers were evaluated using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). The SAXS experiments showed that introducing th...

Integrins can exist in a range of functional states, depending on the cell type and its state of activation. Although the mechanism that controls activity is unknown, it has been suggested that for some integrins, alpha chain cytoplasmic domains may exert either a negative effect or no effect on adhesion function. To address this issue for VLA-4 (an alpha 4 beta 1 heterodimer), we constructed a...

Structural diversity in the peptide binding sites of the redundant classical MHC antigen presenting molecules is strongly selected in humans and mice. Although the encoded antigen presenting molecules overlap in antigen presenting function, differences in polymorphism at the MHC I A, B and C loci in humans and higher primates indicate these loci are not functionally equivalent. The structural b...

Vasoactive intestinal polypeptide (VIP) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating peptide (PACAP) interact with VPAC(2) receptors in rabbit and guinea pig (GP) gastric muscle but with functionally distinct VIP and PACAP receptors in GP tenia coli. This study examined whether selectivity for VIP was determined by two residues (40, 41) in the extracellular domain that differ in the VIP receptors...

In an attempt to introduce a large peptide that is not normally translocated across membranes into the cytosol of eukaryotic cells, we created a new chimeric protein termed CEDH between Pseudomonas aeruginosa exotoxin A (ETA) and a variant enzyme of Mus musculus dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) with reduced affinity for antifolates, ETA(1-413).DHFR(1-187).ETA(609-613). We have defined, geneticall...