By extracellular labeling of peptides of intact Corynebacterium diphtheriae, followed by fractionation of the cells and chain completion by isolated polysomes, it is shown that diphtheria toxin is formed and secreted cotranslationally by membrane-bound polysomes; free polysomes from none. Moreover, when the chains on these polysomes were completed in vitro, in the absence of membrane they were ...

The effect of synthetic sorbin derivatives was determined on cholera toxin-stimulated jejunal secretion in anesthetized rats in vivo, using both perfused and ligated loop. An inhibitory effect on water secretion induced by cholera toxin was shown with C-terminal sorbin peptides: C20 (YEPGKSSILQHERPVTKPQA-amide), C10 and Dala 7 heptapeptide-amide of sorbin, given by subcutaneous (SC) or intraduo...

UNLABELLED The accessory growth regulator (Agr)-like quorum sensing (QS) system of Clostridium perfringens controls the production of many toxins, including beta toxin (CPB). We previously showed (J. E. Vidal, M. Ma, J. Saputo, J. Garcia, F. A. Uzal, and B. A. McClane, Mol Microbiol 83:179-194, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2958.2011.07925.x) that an 8-amino-acid, AgrD-derived peptide ...

The tetanus toxin light chain blocks calcium induced vasopressin release from neurohypophysial nerve terminals. Here we show that histidine residue 233 within the putative zinc binding motif of the tetanus toxin light chain is essential for the inhibition of exocytosis, in the rat. The zinc chelating agent dipicolinic acid as well as captopril, an inhibitor of zinc-dependent peptidases, counter...

By applying analysis of the principal components of amino acid physical properties we predicted cathepsin cleavage sites, MHC binding affinity, and probability of B-cell epitope binding of peptides in tetanus toxin and in ten diverse additional proteins. Cross-correlation of these metrics, for peptides of all possible amino acid index positions, each evaluated in the context of a ±25 amino acid...

Objective(s): Scorpion venom has toxic effects on mammals, insects and crustaceans.  Toxicogenic peptides are major contributors to the scorpion venom, which make it toxic. The Hemiscorpius lepturus (H. lepturus) is one of the most common scorpion bites agent, and responsible for 95% of scorpion bite deaths cases in Iran.Materials and Methods:</strong...

The conventional wisdom is that certain classes of bioactive peptides have specific structural features that endow their particular functions. Accordingly, predictions of bioactivity have focused on particular subgroups, such as antimicrobial peptides. We hypothesized that bioactive peptides may share more general features, and assessed this by contrasting the predictive power of existing antim...

Race 1 of Cochliobolus carbonum, a fungal plant pathogen, owes its exceptional virulence on certain genotypes of maize to the production of HC-toxin, a cyclic tetrapeptide. Production of HC-toxin is controlled by a single known gene, TOX2. Race 1, but not races that do not make HC-toxin, contains two copies of a 22-kilobase (kb) region of chromosomal DNA that is required for HC-toxin biosynthes...

The accumulation of inositol phosphates in WRK 1 cells, stimulated with a range of vasopressin concentrations, was diminished by prior exposure to cholera toxin or forskolin, whilst that observed in the presence of maximal concentrations of the hormone was enhanced in pertussis-toxin-treated cells. In the presence of [32P]NAD+, both cholera toxin and pertussis toxin provoked the labelling of pe...