Production of human tetraspanin proteins in Escherichia coli.

Tetraspanins are found in multicellular eukaryotes and are generally thought to act as scaffolding proteins, localizing multiple proteins to a specific region of the cell membrane. Activities for tetraspanins have been identified in several fundamental processes such as motility, cell adhesion, proliferation and viral entry. Tetraspanins are also key players in cancer development and progression.

Membrane topology of the Drosophila OR83b odorant receptor.

By analogy to mammals, odorant receptors (ORs) in insects, such as Drosophila melanogaster, have long been thought to belong to the G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily. However, recent work has cast doubt on this assumption and has tentatively suggested an inverted topology compared to the canonical N(out) - C(in) 7 transmembrane (TM) GPCR topology, at least for some Drosophila ORs. Here, we report a detailed topology mapping of the Drosophila OR83b receptor using engineered glycosylation sites as topology markers.

Cross-bridge kinetics in rat myocardium: effect of sarcomere length and calcium activation.

We tested the hypotheses that Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+)]) and sarcomere length (SL) modulate force development via graded effects on cross-bridge kinetics in chemically permeabilized rat cardiac trabeculae. Using sinusoidal length perturbations, we derived the transfer functions of stiffness over a range of [Ca(2+)] at a constant SL of 2.1 micrometer (n = 8) and at SL of 2.

The distribution of positively charged residues in bacterial inner membrane proteins correlates with the trans-membrane topology.

The amino acid distribution in membrane spanning segments and connecting loops in bacterial inner membrane proteins was analysed. The basic residues Arg and Lys are four times less prevalent in periplasmic as compared to cytosolic connecting loops, whereas no comparable effect is observed for the acidic residues Asp and Glu. Also, Pro is shown to be tolerated to a much larger extent in membrane spanning segments with their N-terminus pointing towards the cytosol than in those with the opposite orientation.

Determination of stability constants of cadmium(II) with some amino-acids by use of an ion-selective electrode.

Three different methods were used to obtain the stability constants of the complexes of cadmium with several mino-acids. Two made use of an ion-selective electrode; the third was based on pH-measurement only. Values of beta(ml) and beta(ml)(2) obtained in 0.