Subepithelial myofibroblast-derived prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) regulates epithelial chloride secretion in the intestine. Thrombin is elevated in inflammatory conditions of the bowel. Therefore, we sought to determine a role for thrombin in regulating PGE(2) synthesis by colonic myofibroblasts. Incubation of cultured CCD-18Co colonic myofibroblasts with thrombin, the proteinase-activated recept...

The amino acid sequence is available at NCBI protein locus AAA51678. It consists of a signal peptide from amino acid 1 to 24 and a mature peptide from amino acid 25 to 147. ANG is a basic, single chain potent blood-vessel inducing protein with a molecular weight of 14 kDa which was originally discovered in conditioned media of a human colon carcinoma cell line HT-29. ANG belongs to the RNAse su...

This study was designed to identify the role of a recently identified Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CaMK)-like kinase (CaMKLK) in neuronal apoptosis. For this purpose, we studied proteolytic cleavage of CaMKLK by caspases in vitro and in neuronal NG108 cells. In addition, we have investigated the effect of overexpression of wild type and mutant CaMKLK proteins on staurosporine- an...

Two derivatives of horse liver alcohol dehydrogenase (LADH) in which the active site is specifically metal-depleted [H4Zn(n)2LADH] or specifically Co-substituted [Co(c)2-Zn(n)2LADH] have been studied by crystallographic methods. (In these formulae, "n" identifies the noncatalytic zinc ion and "c" identifies the catalytic metal ion.) X-ray data were collected for H4Zn(n)2LADH to 2.7-A resolution...

The broad objective of the research presented here is to develop a noncatalytic plasmid maintenance system for the stabilization of multicopy expression plasmids encoding foreign antigens in a Salmonella typhi live-vector vaccine strain such as CVD 908-htrA. We have enhanced the maintenance of expression plasmids at two independent levels. First, we removed dependence upon balanced-lethal maint...

Histone deacetylases (HDACs) are involved in regulating transcription by modifying the core histones of the nucleosome. To date, six HDACs have been identified in mammalian cells: the yeast RPD3 homologs HDAC1, 2, and 3 and the yeast HDA1 homologs HDAC4, 5, and 6. HDAC4 and HDAC5 contain a noncatalytic N-terminal domain. Herein, we report the identification of a protein HDRP (HDAC-related prote...

A mathematical model was developed to relate the degradation trend of bioresorbable polymers to different underlying hydrolysis mechanisms, including noncatalytic random scission, autocatalytic random scission, noncatalytic end scission or autocatalytic end scission. The effect of each mechanism on molecular weight degradation and potential mass loss was analysed. A simple scheme was developed ...

The cGMP sensitivity of cyclic nucleotide-gated (CNG) channels can be modulated by changes in phosphorylation catalyzed by protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) and protein tyrosine phosphatases. Previously, we used genistein, a PTK inhibitor, to probe the interaction between PTKs and homomeric channels comprised of alpha subunits (RETalpha) of rod photoreceptor CNG channels expressed in Xenopus oocy...

Gcn5 protein is a prototypical histone acetyltransferase that controls transcription of multiple yeast genes. To identify molecular functions that act downstream of or in parallel with Gcn5 protein, we screened for suppressors that rescue the transcriptional defects of HIS3 caused by a catalytically inactive mutant Gcn5, the E173H mutant. One bypass of Gcn5 requirement gene (BGR) suppressor was...