Protein arginine deiminases (PADs) catalyze the post-translational hydrolysis of arginine residues to form citrulline. This once obscure modification is now known to play a key role in the etiology of multiple autoimmune diseases (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, lupus, and ulcerative colitis) and in some forms of cancer. Among the five human PADs (PAD1, -2, -3, -4, and -6), it i...

The multifunctional ‘insect kinins’ share the evolutionarily conserved C-terminal pentapeptide motif Phe-X-X-Trp-Gly-NH2, where X 1 = His, Asn, Ser, or Tyr and X = Ser, Pro, or Ala; and are associated with the regulation of diuresis in a variety of species of insects. We previously reported the functional expression of a southern cattle tick (Boophilus microplus) G protein-coupled receptor that...

A combined matrix isolation FT-IR and theoretical DFT(B3LYP)/6-311++G(d,p) study of the molecular structure and photochemistry of 5-ethoxy-1-phenyl-1H-tetrazole (5EPT) was performed. A new method of synthesis of the compound is described. Calculations show three minima, very close in energy and separated by low-energy barriers (less than 4 kJ mol-1), in the ground-state potential energy profile...

In this study, a learning device based on the PATtree data structures was developed. The original PAT-trees were enhanced with the deletion function to emulate human learning competence. The learning process worked as follows. The linguistic patterns from the text corpus are inserted into the PAT-tree one by one. Since the memory was limited, hopefully, the important and new patterns would be r...

We report here the first study of the protonated, neutral form of tetrazoles as anion binding functional groups. Our studies reveal them to be capable of binding anions with extremely high potency in polar solutions. In studying carboxylic acid-containing congeners, we find a remarkable discrepancy: a strictly analogous acid-containing host binds anions > or = 50,000-fold more weakly than the t...

A concise two step synthesis of tetrazole containing macrocycles from readily accessible starting materials is presented. The first step comprises a chemoselective amidation of amino acid derived isocyanocarboxylicacid esters with unprotected symmetrical diamines to afford diverse α-isocyano-ω-amines. In the second step, the α-isocyano-ω-amines undergo an Ugi tetrazole reaction to close the mac...

Drug-coated balloons (DCBs) have now emerged as a promising approach to treat peripheral artery disease. However, a significant amount of drug from the balloon surface is lost during balloon tracking and results in delivering only a subtherapeutic dose of drug at the diseased site. Hence, in this study, the use of dextran sulfate (DS) polymer was investigated as a platform to control the drug r...

Several substituted-benzimidazole 3-(4-{5-Amino-6-fluoro-1-[2'-(1H-tetrazole-5-yl)-biphenyl-4ylmethyl]-1H-benzoimidazol-2-yl}-phenyl) -2-(substituted)thiazolidin-4-one were synthesized by condensation of various steps with various substituted aryl aldehydes reaction. Elemental analysis, IR, 1HNMR and mass spectral data confirmed the structure of the newly synthesized compounds. Synthesized and ...

Excited-state dynamics of two novel energetic nitrogen-rich aryl-tetrazole molecules were investigated using femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy. The internal conversion from Sn to S1 occurred in the 0.3–0.5 ps; vibrational relaxation within states transpired a 1.8–5 ps time scale and, subsequently, intersystem crossing was observed with lifetimes 7.8 and 129 ps. nitro-substituted tet...