An in vitro study on the DNA damaging effects of phytochemicals partially isolated from an extract of Glinus lotoides.

An extract of Glinus lotoides, a medicinal plant used in Africa and Asia for various therapeutic purposes, was recently shown to cause DNA damage in vitro. To further explore the potential genotoxicity of this plant, fractionation of the crude extract was performed using reverse phase solid-phase extraction and a stepwise gradient elution of methanol in water. Four fractions were collected and subsequently analysed for their DNA damaging effects in mouse lymphoma cells using an alkaline version of the comet assay.

Interlocking disulfides in circular proteins: toward efficient oxidative folding of cyclotides.

Cyclotides are ultrastable plant proteins characterized by the presence of a cyclic amide backbone and three disulfide bonds that form a cystine knot. Because of their extreme stability, there has been significant interest in developing these molecules as a drug design scaffold. For this potential to be realized, efficient methods for the synthesis and oxidative folding of cyclotides need to be developed, yet we currently have only a basic understanding of the folding mechanism and the factors influencing this process.

Ultra-stable peptide scaffolds for protein engineering-synthesis and folding of the circular cystine knotted cyclotide cycloviolacin O2.

The cyclic cystine knot motif, as defined by the cyclotide peptide family, is an attractive scaffold for protein engineering. To date, however, the utilisation of this scaffold has been limited by the inability to synthesise members of the most diverse and biologically active subfamily, the bracelet cyclotides. This study describes the synthesis and first direct oxidative folding of a bracelet cyclotide-cycloviolacin O2-and thus provides an efficient method for exploring the most potent cyclic cystine knot peptides.

3D-QSAR studies of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase inhibitors based on a divide and conquer strategy.

PDHK is a highly specific enzyme, which inhibits PDC thereby reducing the conversion of pyruvate to AcetylCoA leading to increased glucose and lactate level contributing to various pathological disease states. 3D-QSAR CoMFA studies were performed on diverse PDHK inhibitors based on maximum common substructural alignments of different classes of molecules with the selected reference molecule using a divide and conquer strategy. Statistically robust CoMFA model was obtained with a cross-validated correlation coefficient of 0.