Resveratrol induces thermal stabilization of human serum albumin and modulates the early aggregation stage.

Several phenolic compounds bind to proteins and show the ability to interfere with their aggregation process. The impact of the natural polyphenol resveratrol on the stability and heat induced aggregation of human serum albumin (HSA) was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR), UV-vis absorbance, ThT fluorescence, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and molecular modeling. The binding of resveratrol to HSA improves the stability of the protein to thermal unfolding, particularly for the energetic domain containing the ligand binding site, as modeled by computational techniques.

Alpha-synuclein and familial variants affect the chain order and the thermotropic phase behavior of anionic lipid vesicles.

Alpha-synuclein (aSN) is a presynaptic protein with a pathological role in Parkinson's disease (PD). The mutants A30P, E46K and A53T are involved in PD early-onset forms. aSN is natively unfolded but can self-assemble to oligomers and fibrils and binds anionic membranes in a helical conformation.

Chain interdigitation in DPPC bilayers induced by HgCl2: evidences from continuous wave and pulsed EPR.

Continuous-wave electron paramagnetic resonance (CW-EPR) spectroscopy and electron spin echo methods of pulsed EPR of phosphatidylcholine spin-labeled at different positions, n, in the sn-2 chain (n-PCSL, n=5, 7, 10, 12, 14, and 16) are used to study the interaction of inorganic mercury chloride HgCl2 with multilamellar vesicles of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC). For temperatures through the gel phase of DPPC multilayers, the CW-EPR spectra show that an increase of HgCl2 content in the dispersion medium slightly increases the rotational mobility of 5-PCSL and markedly restricts the motion of 16-PCSL. Mercury chloride at 100mM (HgCl2/lipid molar ratio=2:1) removes the gradient of increasing mobility along the chain found in DPPC bilayers in the gel phase.

Stability of trans-resveratrol associated with transport proteins.

Spectrophotometry and fluorescence combined with docking and molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the effect of the carrier proteins β-lactoglobulin and human serum albumin on the degradative trans-to-cis conversion of resveratrol. The spectroscopic measurements quantify the concentration of resveratrol isoforms after 2 h of irradiation with light at 340 nm, showing that their ratio depends linearly on temperature between 20 and 50 °C and obeys an Arrhenius law with activation energies of photoisomerization of 7.8 and 11.

Relationship between genetic variant in pre-microRNA-146a and genetic predisposition to temporal lobe epilepsy: a case-control study.

There is evidence that inflammatory mechanisms play a role in the pathogenesis of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). MicroRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding endogenous RNAs, which negatively regulate target gene expression, have shown different expression patterns in immune diseases. Recently, several miRNAs have been found to be differentially expressed in animal models of TLE.