Anesthesia and Circulating Tumor Cells in Primary Breast Cancer Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: The effect of anesthetic drugs on cancer outcomes remains unclear. This trial aimed to assess postoperative circulating tumor cell counts-an independent prognostic factor for breast cancer-to determine how anesthesia may indirectly affect prognosis. It was hypothesized that patients receiving sevoflurane would have higher postoperative tumor cell counts.

Rigid fusions of designed helical repeat binding proteins efficiently protect a binding surface from crystal contacts.

Designed armadillo repeat proteins (dArmRPs) bind extended peptides in a modular way. The consensus version recognises alternating arginines and lysines, with one dipeptide per repeat. For generating new binding specificities, the rapid and robust analysis by crystallography is key.

Curvature of designed armadillo repeat proteins allows modular peptide binding.

Designed armadillo repeat proteins (dArmRPs) were developed to create a modular peptide binding technology where each of the structural repeats binds two residues of the target peptide. An essential prerequisite for such a technology is a dArmRP geometry that matches the peptide bond length. To this end, we determined a large set (n=27) of dArmRP X-ray structures, of which 12 were previously unpublished, to calculate curvature parameters that define their geometry.

Computationally Designed Armadillo Repeat Proteins for Modular Peptide Recognition.

Armadillo repeat proteins (ArmRPs) recognize their target peptide in extended conformation and bind, in a first approximation, two residues per repeat. Thus, they may form the basis for building a modular system, in which each repeat is complementary to a piece of the target peptide. Accordingly, preselected repeats could be assembled into specific binding proteins on demand and thereby avoid the traditional generation of every new binding molecule by an independent selection from a library.

Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Resonators for Monitoring Conditioning Film Formation.

We propose surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators as a complementary tool for conditioning film monitoring. Conditioning films are formed by adsorption of inorganic and organic substances on a substrate the moment this substrate comes into contact with a liquid phase. In the case of implant insertion, for instance, initial protein adsorption is required to start wound healing, but it will also trigger immune reactions leading to inflammatory responses.

A combined NMR and computational approach to investigate peptide binding to a designed Armadillo repeat protein.

The specific recognition of peptide sequences by proteins plays an important role both in biology and in diagnostic applications. Here we characterize the relatively weak binding of the peptide neurotensin (NT) to the previously developed Armadillo repeat protein VG_328 by a multidisciplinary approach based on solution NMR spectroscopy, mutational studies, and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, totaling 20μs for all MD runs. We describe assignment challenges arising from the repetitive nature of the protein sequence, and we present novel approaches to address them.

Spontaneous self-assembly of engineered armadillo repeat protein fragments into a folded structure.

Repeat proteins are built of modules, each of which constitutes a structural motif. We have investigated whether fragments of a designed consensus armadillo repeat protein (ArmRP) recognize each other. We examined a split ArmRP consisting of an N-capping repeat (denoted Y), three internal repeats (M), and a C-capping repeat (A).

Variants of a Thermus aquaticus DNA polymerase with increased selectivity for applications in allele- and methylation-specific amplification.

The selectivity of DNA polymerases is crucial for many applications. For example, high discrimination between the extension of matched versus mismatched primer termini is desired for the detection of a single nucleotide variation at a particular locus within the genome. Here we describe the generation of thermostable mutants of the large fragment of Thermus aquaticus DNA polymerase (KlenTaq) with increased mismatch extension selectivity.

Optimization of designed armadillo repeat proteins by molecular dynamics simulations and NMR spectroscopy.

A multidisciplinary approach based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using homology models, NMR spectroscopy, and a variety of biophysical techniques was used to efficiently improve the thermodynamic stability of armadillo repeat proteins (ArmRPs). ArmRPs can form the basis of modular peptide recognition and the ArmRP version on which synthetic libraries are based must be as stable as possible. The 42-residue internal Arm repeats had been designed previously using a sequence-consensus method.

Residue-resolved stability of full-consensus ankyrin repeat proteins probed by NMR.

We investigated the stability determinants and the unfolding characteristics of full-consensus designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) by NMR. Despite the repeating sequence motifs, the resonances could be fully assigned using (2)H,(15)N,(13)C triple-labeled proteins. To remove further ambiguities, we attached paramagnetic spin labels to either end of these elongated proteins, which attenuate the resonances of the spatially closest residues.