Spectrophotometric determination of α-hydroxytropolone p values: A structure-acidity relationship study.

α-Hydroxytropolones (αHTs) have a wealth of biological activity owing to their ability to serve as metalbinding fragments for many therapeutically valuable dinuclear metalloenzymes. They also have the potential to exist in as many as 4 protonation states under aqueous acidic or basic conditions. The following details how UV absorption can be used to generate p values on a series of αHTs.

Efficacy of hepatitis B virus ribonuclease H inhibitors, a new class of replication antagonists, in FRG human liver chimeric mice.

Chronic hepatitis B virus infection cannot be cured by current therapies, so new treatments are urgently needed. We recently identified novel inhibitors of the hepatitis B virus ribonuclease H that suppress viral replication in cell culture. Here, we employed immunodeficient FRG KO mice whose livers had been engrafted with primary human hepatocytes to ask whether ribonuclease H inhibitors can suppress hepatitis B virus replication in vivo.

PHOXI: A High Quantum Yield, Solvent-Sensitive Blue Fluorescent 5-Hydroxytryptophan Derivative Synthesized within Ten Minutes under Aqueous, Ambient Conditions.

Multiple tryptophan (Trp) proteins are not amenable to fluorescence study because individual residue emission is not resolvable. Biosynthetic incorporation of an indole analogue such as 5-hydroxyindole has not provided sufficient spectroscopic resolution because of low quantum yield and small emission shift. Here, 5-hydroxyindole is used as the starting framework for building a blue emitting fluorophore of high quantum yield, 2-phenyl-6H-oxazolo[4,5-e]indole (PHOXI).

Troponoids Can Inhibit Growth of the Human Fungal Pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans.

is a pathogen that is common in immunosuppressed patients. It can be treated with amphotericin B and fluconazole, but the mortality rate remains 15 to 30%. Thus, novel and more effective anticryptococcal therapies are needed.

Sample limited characterization of a novel disulfide-rich venom peptide toxin from terebrid marine snail Terebra variegata.

Disulfide-rich peptide toxins found in the secretions of venomous organisms such as snakes, spiders, scorpions, leeches, and marine snails are highly efficient and effective tools for novel therapeutic drug development. Venom peptide toxins have been used extensively to characterize ion channels in the nervous system and platelet aggregation in haemostatic systems. A significant hurdle in characterizing disulfide-rich peptide toxins from venomous animals is obtaining significant quantities needed for sequence and structural analyses.

Geobacillus gargensis sp. nov., a novel thermophile from a hot spring, and the reclassification of Bacillus vulcani as Geobacillus vulcani comb. nov.

A novel thermophilic spore-forming strain, Ga(T), was isolated from the Garga hot spring located in the northern part of the Transbaikal region (Russia). Strain Ga(T) was found to be an aerobic, Gram-positive, rod-shaped, thermophilic (optimum growth temperature is 60-65 degrees C), chemo-organotrophic bacterium that grows on various sugars, carboxylic acids and hydrocarbons. The G+C content of its DNA is 52.