Sharif Digital Repository

Background: Codon degeneracy and codon usage by organisms is an interesting and challenging problem. Researchers demonstrated the relation between codon usage and various functions or properties of genes and proteins, such as gene regulation, translation rate, translation efficiency, mRNA stability, splicing, and protein domains. Researchers usually represent segments of proteins responsible for specific functions or structures in a family of proteins as sequence patterns or motifs. We asked the question if organisms use the same codons in pattern segments as compared to the rest of the sequence. Methods. We used the likelihood ratio test, Pearson's chi-squared test, and mutual information... 

The physical properties and chemical structure of a new biosurfactant (licheniformin) produced by Bacillus licheniformis MS3 were investigated. The purified biosurfactant was identified as a lipopeptide with amino acid sequence of Gly, Ala, Val, Asp, Ser, Gly, Tyr and a lactone linkage between the carboxyl group of Aspargine and hydroxyl group of Tyrosine residue. The fatty acid moiety was attached to N-terminal amino acid residue through an amide bond. The purified licheniformin could lower the surface tension of water from 72 to 38 mN/m at concentrations higher than 15 μg/mL and its relative emulsion volume (EV%) was equal to 36%. It also showed stable surface activity over a wide range of... 

Calcineurin is an essential calcium-activated serine/threonine phosphatase. The six NMR-observable methionine methyl groups in the catalytic domain of human calcineurin Aα (CNA) were assigned and used as reporters of the presence of potential cis-trans isomers in solution. Proline 84 is found in the cis conformation in most calcineurin X-ray structures, and proline 309, which is part of a highly conserved motif in phosphoprotein phosphatases, was modeled with a cis peptide bond in one of the two molecules present in the asymmetric unit of CNA. We mutated each of the two prolines to alanine to force the trans conformation. Solution NMR shows that the P84A CNA mutant exists in two forms,... 

Histidine rich protein II derived peptide (HRP II 169-182) was investigated by molecular dynamics, MD, simulation and 17O electric field gradient, EFG, tensor calculations. MD simulation was performed in water at 300 K with α-helix initial structure. It was found that peptide loses its initial α-helix structure rapidly and is converted to random coil and bent secondary structures. To understand how peptide structure affects EFG tensors, initial structure and final conformations resulting from MD simulations were used to calculate 17O EFG tensors of backbone carbonyl oxygens. Calculations were performed using B3LYP method and 6-31 + G* basis set. Calculated 17O EFG tensors were used to... 

Recently, we have developed an artificial neural network model, which was able to predict accurately the electrophoretic mobilities of relatively small peptides. To examine the robustness of this methodology, a 3-3-1 back-propagation artificial neural network (BP-ANN) model was developed using the same inputs as the previous model, which were the Offord's charge over mass term (Q/M2/3), corrected steric substituent constant (E s,c) and molar refractivity (MR). The data set consisted of 102 peptides with a larger range of size than that of our earlier report - up to 42 amino acid residues as compared to 13 amino acids in the initial study - that also included highly charged and hydrophobic... 

Formation of the amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide aggregations represents an indispensable role in appearing and progression of Alzheimer disease. β-sheet breaker peptides can be designed and modified with different amino acids in order to improve biological properties and binding affinity to the amyloid beta peptide. In the present study, three peptide sequences were designed based on the hopeful results of LIAIMA peptide and molecular docking studies were carried out onto the monomer and fibril structure of amyloid beta peptide using AutoDock Vina software. According to the obtained interactions and binding energy from docking, the best-designed peptide (D-GABA-FPLIAIMA) was chosen and... 

The cellular microenvironment can be engineered through the utilization of various nano-patterns and matrix-loaded bioactive molecules. In this study, a multilayer system of electrospun scaffold containing chitosan nanoparticles was introduced to overcome the common problems of instability and burst release of proteins from nanofibrous scaffolds. Bovine serum albumin (BSA)-loaded chitosan nanoparticles was fabricated based on ionic gelation interaction between chitosan and sodium tripolyphosphate. Suspension electrospinning was employed to fabricate poly-e{open}-caprolacton (PCL) containing protein-loaded chitosan nanoparticles with a core-shell structure. To obtain the desired scaffold... 

Background: It has been previously shown that palindromic sequences are frequently observed in proteins. However, our knowledge about their evolutionary origin and their possible importance is incomplete. Results: In this work, we tried to revisit this relatively neglected phenomenon. Several questions are addressed in this work. (1) It is known that there is a large chance of finding a palindrome in low complexity sequences (i.e. sequences with extreme amino acid usage bias). What is the role of sequence complexity in the evolution of palindromic sequences in proteins? (2) Do palindromes coincide with conserved protein sequences? If yes, what are the functions of these conserved segments?...