The first committed step of fatty acid and polyketides biosynthesis, the biotin-dependent carboxylation of an acyl-CoA, is catalyzed by acyl-CoA carboxylases (ACCases) such as acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and propionyl-CoA carboxylase (PCC). ACC and PCC in Streptomyces coelicolor are homologue multisubunit complexes that can carboxylate different short chain acyl-CoAs. While ACC is able to carboxylate acetyl-, propionyl-, or butyryl-CoA with approximately the same specificity, PCC only recognizes propionyl- and butyryl-CoA as substrates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMycolic acids are essential for the survival, virulence and antibiotic resistance of the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Inhibitors of mycolic acid biosynthesis, such as isoniazid and ethionamide, have been used as efficient drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis. However, the increase in cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis has prompted a search for new targets and agents that could also affect synthesis of mycolic acids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven activity training data from high-throughput screening (HTS) experiments, virtual high-throughput screening (vHTS) methods aim to predict in silico the activity of untested chemicals. We present a novel method, the Influence Relevance Voter (IRV), specifically tailored for the vHTS task. The IRV is a low-parameter neural network which refines a k-nearest neighbor classifier by nonlinearly combining the influences of a chemical's neighbors in the training set.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMycolic acids and multimethyl-branched fatty acids are found uniquely in the cell envelope of pathogenic mycobacteria. These unusually long fatty acids are essential for the survival, virulence, and antibiotic resistance of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Acyl-CoA carboxylases (ACCases) commit acyl-CoAs to the biosynthesis of these unique fatty acids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSac7d, a small, abundant, sequence-general DNA-binding protein from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius, causes a single-step sharp kink in DNA (approximately 60 degrees) via the intercalation of both Val26 and Met29. These two amino acids were systematically changed in size to probe their effects on DNA kinking. Eight crystal structures of five Sac7d mutant-DNA complexes have been analyzed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVarious inositide phosphatases participate in the regulation of inositol polyphosphate signaling molecules. Plant phytases are phosphatases that hydrolyze phytate to less-phosphorylated myo-inositol derivatives and phosphate. The phytase from Selenomonas ruminantium shares no sequence homology with other microbial phytases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe crystal structure of a small, basic DNA binding protein, Sso10b2, from the thermoacidophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus was determined by the Zn multiwavelength anomalous diffraction method and refined to 1.85 A resolution. The 89-amino-acid protein adopts a betaalphabetaalphabetabeta topology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFActa Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr
September 2002
D-Aminoacylases catalyze the hydrolysis of N-acyl-D-amino acids into D-amino acids with the aid of zinc ions. The first D-aminoacylase crystal from Alcaligenes faecalis has been obtained in hanging drops at pH 5.6 by the vapour-diffusion method using 30% polyethylene glycol 4000 as precipitant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF