Publications by authors named "Carla A Omaga"

Article Synopsis
  • The text discusses a cyanobacterial model organism crucial for studying its circadian clock, photosynthesis, and various biological processes.
  • This organism is also significant for genetic engineering aimed at producing renewable biochemicals.
  • The research highlights a SeAgo-based mechanism that defends against unwanted genetic material transfer and shows that deleting a specific gene can enhance genetic studies and engineering efforts.
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Oxidative stress unleashes reactive species capable of oxidizing 2'-deoxyguanosine (G) nucleotides in G-rich sequences of the genome, such as the potential G-quadruplex forming sequencing (PQS) in the NEIL3 gene promoter. Oxidative modification of G yields 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2'-deoxyguanosine (OG) that can be further oxidized to hydantoin products. Herein, OG was synthesized into the NEIL3 PQS that was allowed to fold to a G-quadruplex (G4) in K ion solutions with varying amounts of Mg in the physiological range.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how the DNA repair enzyme APE1 interacts with G-quadruplex (G4) DNA structures that contain an abasic site, which may play a role in gene regulation during oxidative stress.
  • Using second harmonic generation (SHG), researchers confirmed that APE1 binds to the G4 folds in a specific and ordered manner, addressing previous uncertainties about this interaction.
  • The findings revealed that APE1 has a significant binding affinity (dissociation constant of ~100 nM) for G4 structures compared to standard DNA forms, highlighting SHG as a valuable tool for studying complex DNA-protein interactions in biochemistry.
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Article Synopsis
  • * The study characterizes a specific peptide from Drilliidae venom, named cdg14a, which is small and rich in disulfide bonds, and shows effects on mouse behavior, causing increased excitability in certain nerve cells.
  • * Findings indicate that cdg14a could influence specific potassium channels, highlighting the potential of Drilliidae venoms as a source for developing new therapeutic agents targeting ion channels in the nervous system.
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DNA oxidation is an inevitable and usually detrimental process, but the cell is capable of reversing this state because the cell possesses a highly developed set of DNA repair machineries, including the DNA glycosylase NEIL3 that is encoded by the NEIL3 gene. In this work, the G-rich promoter region of the human NEIL3 gene was shown to fold into a dynamic G-quadruplex (G4) structure under nearly physiological conditions using spectroscopic techniques (e.g.

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The turripeptide ubi3a was isolated from the venom of the marine gastropod Unedogemmula bisaya, family Turridae, by bioassay-guided purification; both native and synthetic ubi3a elicited prolonged tremors when injected intracranially into mice. The sequence of the peptide, DCCOCOAGAVRCRFACC-NH (O = 4-hydroxyproline) follows the framework III pattern for cysteines (CC-C-C-CC) in the M-superfamily of conopeptides. The three-dimensional structure determined by NMR spectroscopy indicated a disulfide connectivity that is not found in conopeptides with the cysteine framework III: C-C C-C, C-C.

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