Cisplatin is a widely used anticancer drug that acts by binding DNA and causing the formation of intrastrand and interstrand (ICL) crosslinks, but the precise downstream effects of the latter damage are not well understood. In this study, we investigated the influence of cisplatin ICLs on synthetic nucleosomes that were platinated in a site-specific manner in vitro and on gene transcription in ...

*Correspondence: Takashi Yagi, Laboratory of Molecular and Cellular Genetics, Department of Biology, Graduate School of Science and Radiation Research Center, Osaka Prefecture University, 1-2, Gakuen-cho, Naka-ku, Sakai, Osaka 599-8570, Japan e-mail: [email protected] Formaldehyde is commonly used in the chemical industry and is present in the environment, such as vehicle emissions, ...

The 3' major domain of Escherichia coli 16S rRNA, which occupies the head of the small ribosomal subunit, is involved in several functions of the ribosome. We have used a site-specific crosslinking procedure to gain further insights into the higher-order structure of this domain. Circularly permuted RNAs were used to introduce an azidophenacyl group at specific positions within the 3' major dom...

2014 The critical behavior at the percolation threshold for a randomly crosslinked polymer melt of linear chains is studied by computer simulations. We show that the fraction of crosslinks per chain pc at the vulcanization/percolation threshold is independent of chain length N for large N. Thus for long chains, the volume fraction of crosslinks at the transition decreases as 1/N in agreement wi...

Long-lived structural proteins, collagen and elastin, undergo continual non-enzymatic crosslinking during aging and in diabetic individuals. This abnormal protein crosslinking is mediated by advanced glycation end products (AGEs) generated by non-enzymatic glycosylation of proteins by glucose. The AGE-derived protein crosslinking of structural proteins contributes to the complications of long-t...

The collagen crosslinks, pyridinoline and deoxypyridinoline, have been developed as urinary markers of bone resorption but, despite wide clinical application of the technique, comparatively little attention has been paid to the standardization of these compounds. In this study, pyridinoline and deoxypyridinoline have been purified from bone and converted completely to monochloride trihydrochlor...

A new mathematical model is presented to describe the elastic and viscoelastic properties of a single collagen fiber. The model is formulated by accounting for the mechanical contribution of the collagen fiber's main constituents: the microfibrils, the interfibrillar matrix and crosslinks. The collagen fiber is modeled as a linear elastic spring, which represents the mechanical contribution of ...

The isolated membrane skeleton of human erythrocytes was studied by high resolution negative staining electron microscopy. When the skeletal meshwork is spread onto a thin carbon film, clear images of a primarily hexagonal lattice of junctional F-actin complexes crosslinked by spectrin filaments are obtained. The regularly ordered network extends over the entire membrane skeleton. Some of the j...

Introduction: Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) form when reducing sugars react with proteins. In bone AGEs can form in type I collagen which results in non-enzymatically derived crosslinks. While enzymatic crosslinks play an important role in strengthening the collagen matrix, non-enzymatic crosslinks are believed to reduce toughness. AGEs accumulate in bone over time and play an importan...