Publications by authors named "W H Parsons"

The vasodilator hydralazine (HYZ) has been used clinically for ~ 70 years and remains on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines as a therapy for preeclampsia. Despite its longstanding use and the concomitant progress toward a general understanding of vasodilation, the target and mechanism of HYZ have remained unknown. We show that HYZ selectively targets 2-aminoethanethiol dioxygenase (ADO) by chelating its metal cofactor and alkylating one of its ligands.

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Article Synopsis
  • Rhomboid proteases, including human RHBDL4, are important due to their roles in protein degradation and disease, particularly cancer, but effective chemical tools to study them have been lacking.
  • An activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) assay was developed specifically for RHBDL4, revealing that it undergoes processing to form active proteoforms with shorter C-termini in cells.
  • The study also identified specific chemical compounds that can inhibit RHBDL4 and showed that there are differences in inhibitor preferences between RHBDL4 and another rhomboid protease called PARL, highlighting the utility of ABPP for enzyme characterization and selective targeting.
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Palatable foods can stimulate appetite without hunger, and unconstrained overeating underlies obesity and binge eating disorder. Women are more prone to obesity and binge eating than men but the neural causes of individual differences are unknown. In an animal model of hedonic eating, a prior study found that females were more susceptible than males to eat palatable food when sated and that the neuropeptide orexin/hypocretin (ORX) was crucial in both sexes.

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Electrophilic cofactors are widely distributed in nature and play important roles in many physiological and disease processes, yet they have remained blind spots in traditional activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) approaches that target nucleophiles. More recently, reverse-polarity (RP)-ABPP using hydrazine probes identified an electrophilic -terminal glyoxylyl (Glox) group for the first time in secernin-3 (SCRN3). The biological function(s) of both the protein and Glox as a cofactor has not yet been pharmacologically validated because of the lack of selective inhibitors that could disrupt and therefore identify its activity.

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Interpersonal trust is a key component of cooperation, helping support the complex social networks found across societies. Trust typically involves two parties, one who trusts by taking on risk through investment in a second party, who can be trustworthy and produce mutual benefits. To date, the developmental literature has focused primarily on the trustor, meaning we know little about the ontogeny of trustworthiness.

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