Breeding Cell Penetrating Peptides: Optimization of Cellular Uptake by a Function-Driven Evolutionary Process.

In nature, building block-based biopolymers can adapt to functional and environmental demands by recombination and mutation of the monomer sequence. We present here an analogous, artificial evolutionary optimization process which we have applied to improve the functionality of cell-penetrating peptide molecules. The "evolution" consisted of repeated rounds of in silico peptide sequence alterations using a genetic algorithm followed by in vitro peptide synthesis, experimental analysis, and ranking according to their "fitness" (i.

Improved Bevirimat resistance prediction by combination of structural and sequence-based classifiers.

Background: Maturation inhibitors such as Bevirimat are a new class of antiretroviral drugs that hamper the cleavage of HIV-1 proteins into their functional active forms. They bind to these preproteins and inhibit their cleavage by the HIV-1 protease, resulting in non-functional virus particles. Nevertheless, there exist mutations in this region leading to resistance against Bevirimat.

Insights into the classification of small GTPases.

In this study we used a Random Forest-based approach for an assignment of small guanosine triphosphate proteins (GTPases) to specific subgroups. Small GTPases represent an important functional group of proteins that serve as molecular switches in a wide range of fundamental cellular processes, including intracellular transport, movement and signaling events. These proteins have further gained a special emphasis in cancer research, because within the last decades a huge variety of small GTPases from different subgroups could be related to the development of all types of tumors.

fMRI data visualization with BrainBlend and Blender.

The visualization and exploration of neuroimaging data is important for the analysis of anatomical and functional magnetic resonance (MR) images and thresholded statistical parametric maps. While two-dimensional orthogonal views of neuroimaging data are used to display statistical analyses, real three-dimensional (3d) depictions are helpful for showing the spatial distribution of a functional network, as well as its temporal evolution. However, viewers that are freely available on the internet offer only limited rendering capabilities and depictions of temporal changes of the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response.

Impact of working memory load on FMRI resting state pattern in subsequent resting phases.

Background: The default-mode network (DMN) is a functional network with increasing relevance for psychiatric research, characterized by increased activation at rest and decreased activation during task performance. The degree of DMN deactivation during a cognitively demanding task depends on its difficulty. However, the relation of hemodynamic responses in the resting phase after a preceding cognitive challenge remains relatively unexplored.