On the interactions involving serine proteases obtained from Monacrosporium thaumasium (Ascomycota: Orbiliomycetes) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA): biological macromolecules in action.

The use of force spectroscopy approaches performed with optical tweezers can be very useful in determining the binding modes and the physical chemistry of DNA interactions with ligands, from small drugs to proteins. Helminthophagous fungi, on the other hand, have important enzyme secretion mechanisms for various purposes, and the interactions between such enzymes and nucleic acids are very poorly studied. Therefore, the main goal of the present work was to investigate, at the molecular level, the mechanisms of interaction between fungal serine proteases and the double-stranded (ds) DNA molecule.

Identification of bioactive compounds and cytogenotoxicity of the essential oil from the leaves of Kunth.

Kunth, popularly known as "quince" and "velame," contains a high concentration of volatile oils in the leaves, and widely used in folk medicine as an antiseptic, analgesic, sedative, anti-inflammatory, spasmolytic and local anesthetic. The objectives of this investigation were to (1) identify the phytochemical compounds and (2) assess the cytogenotoxicity of the essential oil extracted from the leaves of Kunth. The oil was extracted utilizing hydrodistillation and phytochemical profile determined using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GCMS).

Correction to Force and Scale Dependence of the Elasticity of Self-Assembled DNA Bottle Brushes.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.

Force and Scale Dependence of the Elasticity of Self-Assembled DNA Bottle Brushes.

As a model system to study the elasticity of bottle-brush polymers, we here introduce self-assembled DNA bottle brushes, consisting of a DNA main chain that can be very long and still of precisely defined length, and precisely monodisperse polypeptide side chains that are physically bound to the DNA main chains. Polypeptide side chains have a diblock architecture, where one block is a small archaeal nucleoid protein Sso7d that strongly binds to DNA. The other block is a net neutral, hydrophilic random coil polypeptide with a length of exactly 798 amino acids.