Publications by authors named "Maria Angeles Chavez"

Article Synopsis
  • A potent protein inhibitor of metallocarboxypeptidases was isolated from a marine snail, focusing on the most abundant isoform, NvCla, which was sequenced and characterized.
  • This protein, consisting of 53 residues and three disulphide bonds, demonstrates high inhibitory activity, especially against human Carboxypeptidase A1, indicating its potential for biomedical applications.
  • Analyses revealed that the inhibitor is stable and thermally resistant, with a specific presence in the snail's body regions, suggesting a role in biological defense mechanisms.
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Unlabelled: Proteases and their inhibitors have become molecules of increasing fundamental and applicative value. Here we report an integrated strategy to identify and analyze such inhibitors from Caribbean marine invertebrates extracts by a fast and sensitive functional proteomics-like approach. The strategy works in three steps: i) multiplexed enzymatic inhibition kinetic assays, ii) Intensity Fading MALDI-TOF MS to establish a link between inhibitory molecules and the related MALDI signal(s) detected in the extract(s), and iii) ISD-CID-T MS fragmentation on the parent MALDI signals selected in the previous step, enabling the partial or total top-down sequencing of the molecules.

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The BPTI/Kunitz-type inhibitor family includes several extremely potent serine protease inhibitors. To date, the inhibitory mechanisms have only been studied for mammalian inhibitors. Here, the first crystal structure of a BPTI/Kunitz-type inhibitor from a marine invertebrate (rShPI-1A) is reported to 2.

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This study describes a novel bifunctional metallocarboxypeptidase and serine protease inhibitor (SmCI) isolated from the tentacle crown of the annelid Sabellastarte magnifica. SmCI is a 165-residue glycoprotein with a molecular mass of 19.69 kDa (mass spectrometry) and 18 cysteine residues forming nine disulfide bonds.

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Dipeptidyl peptidase IV is an ectopeptidase with multiple physiological roles including the degradation of incretins, and a target of therapies for type 2 diabetes mellitus. Divalent cations can inhibit its activity, but there has been little effort to understand how they act. The intact membrane-bound form of porcine kidney dipeptidyl peptidase IV was purified by a simple and fast procedure.

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