Protein kinases are important drug targets, yet specific inhibitors have been developed for only a fraction of the more than 500 human kinases. A major challenge in designing inhibitors for highly related kinases is selectivity. Unlike their non-covalent counterparts, covalent inhibitors offer the advantage of selectively targeting structurally similar kinases by modifying specific protein side chains, particularly non-conserved cysteines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In recent years, human microbiome research has flourished and has drawn attention from both healthcare professionals and general consumers as the human microbiome is now recognized as having a significant influence on human health. This has led to the emergence of companies offering microbiome testing services. Some of these services are sold directly to the consumer via companies' websites or via medical laboratory websites.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: is considered one of the most challenging, drug-resistant, opportunistic pathogens partly due to its ability to synthesize robust biofilms. Biofilm is a mixture of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that encapsulates microbial cells, leading to immune evasion, antibiotic resistance, and thus higher risk of infection. In the cystic fibrosis lung environment, undergoes a mucoid transition, defined by overproduction of the exopolysaccharide alginate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Today, accessing information on health issues is easier than ever. However, the flood of information can make decision-making difficult. Information can influence the intention for an action, yet the action often remains unpredictable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProtein-protein interaction (PPI) networks are a fundamental resource for modeling cellular and molecular function, and a large and sophisticated toolbox has been developed to leverage their structure and topological organization to predict the functional roles of under-studied genes, proteins, and pathways. However, the overwhelming majority of experimentally-determined interactions from which such networks are constructed come from a small number of well-studied model organisms. Indeed, most species lack even a single experimentally-determined interaction in these databases, much less a network to enable the analysis of cellular function, and methods for computational PPI prediction are too noisy to apply directly.
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