Promotion of mammalian angiogenesis by neolignans derived from soybean extracellular fluids.

Excessive or insufficient angiogenesis is associated with major classes of chronic disease. Although less studied, small molecules which can promote angiogenesis are being sought as potential therapeutics for cardiovascular and peripheral arterial disease and stroke. Here we describe a bioassay-directed discovery approach utilising size exclusion and liquid chromatography to purify components of soybean xylem sap that have pro-angiogenic activity.

New Lanthanide Tag for the Generation of Pseudocontact Shifts in DNA by Site-Specific Ligation to a Phosphorothioate Group.

Pseudocontact shifts (PCS) generated by paramagnetic lanthanides provide a rich source of long-range structural restraints that can readily be measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Many different lanthanide-binding tags have been designed for site-specific tagging of proteins, but established routes for tagging DNA with a single metal ion rely on difficult chemical synthesis. Here we present a simple and practical strategy for site-specific tagging of inexpensive phosphorothioate (PT) oligonucleotides.

Iron(III) located in the dinuclear metallo-β-lactamase IMP-1 by pseudocontact shifts.

Heterodinuclear metalloenzymes are an important class of metalloproteins, but determining the location of the different metal ions can be difficult. Herein we present a new NMR spectroscopy method that uses pseudocontact shifts (PCS) to achieve this without assumptions about the coordinating ligands. The approach is illustrated with the dinuclear [FeZn] complex of IMP-1, which is a prototypical metallo-β-lactamase (MβL) that confers resistance to β-lactam antibiotics.