Taipan Natriuretic Peptides Are Potent and Selective Agonists for the Natriuretic Peptide Receptor A.

Cardiovascular ailments are a major cause of mortality where over 1.3 billion people suffer from hypertension leading to heart-disease related deaths. Snake venoms possess a broad repertoire of natriuretic peptides with therapeutic potential for treating hypertension, congestive heart failure, and related cardiovascular disease.

Multiple site-directed mutagenesis of more than 10 sites simultaneously and in a single round.

Site-directed mutagenesis is a powerful tool to explore the structure-function relationship of proteins, but most traditional methods rely on the mutation of only one site at a time and efficiencies drop drastically when more than three sites are targeted simultaneously. Many applications in functional proteomics and genetic engineering, including codon optimization for heterologous expression, generation of cysteine-less proteins, and alanine-scanning mutagenesis, would greatly benefit from a multiple-site mutagenesis method with high efficiency. Here we describe the development of a simple and rapid method for site-directed mutagenesis of more than 10 sites simultaneously with up to 100% efficiency.

High-affinity myo-inositol transport in Candida albicans: substrate specificity and pharmacology.

Inositol is considered a growth factor in yeast cells and it plays an important role in Candida as an essential precursor for phospholipomannan, a glycophosphatidylinositol (GPI)-anchored glycolipid on the cell surface of Candida which is involved in the pathogenicity of this opportunistic fungus and which binds to and stimulates human macrophages. In addition, inositol plays an essential role in the phosphatidylinositol signal transduction pathway, which controls many cell cycle events. Here, high-affinity myo-inositol uptake in Candida albicans has been characterized, with an apparent K(m) value of 240 +/- 15 microM, which appears to be active and energy-dependent as revealed by inhibition with azide and protonophores (FCCP, dinitrophenol).