The P64k protein of Neisseria meningitidis has been reported as an immunological carrier for weak immunogens. This investigation was aimed at characterizing the T-cell response produced in primed mice and at identifying T helper cell epitopes within this molecule. BALB/c mice subcutaneously immunized with the recombinant antigen provided inguinal lymph node cells (LNC) that proliferated in the presence of P64k in a dose-dependent manner. Proliferating cells secreted IL-4 while the concentration of IL-12 remained unaltered in the culture supernatant. By testing a panel of 59 overlapping synthetic peptides spanning the entire sequence of the antigen a T-cell determinant was localized. Prime-boost and lymphoproliferation experiments, conducted with highly purified synthetic peptides, confirmed that the segment including amino acids 470-485 comprises a T-cell epitope within the P64k molecule.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.femsim.2004.05.007 | DOI Listing |
Probiotics Antimicrob Proteins
January 2025
Faculty of Biotechnologies (BioTech), ITMO University, 9 Lomonosova Street, 191002, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small, positively charged biomolecules produced by various organisms such as animals, microbes, and plants. These AMPs play a significant role in defense mechanisms and protect from adverse conditions. The emerging problem of drug resistance in microbes poses a global health challenge in treating diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Biol Macromol
January 2025
School of Chemical Engineering, Yeungnam University, 280-Daehak-ro, Gyeongsan 38541, Republic of Korea. Electronic address:
Tissue engineering offers an alternative approach to developing biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or enhance tissue functionality by integrating principles from medicine, biology, and engineering. In this context, biopolymer-based electrospun nanofibers have emerged as attractive platforms due to their superior physicochemical properties, including excellent biocompatibility, non-toxicity, and desirable biodegradability, compared to synthetic polymers. Considerable efforts have been dedicated to developing suitable substitutes for various biomedical applications, with electrospinning receiving considerable attention as a versatile technique for fabricating nanofibrous platforms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiophys Chem
December 2024
Theoretical Molecular Science Laboratory, RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan; Computational Biophysics Research Group, RIKEN Center for Computational Science, 7-1-26 Minatojima-Minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan; Laboratory for Biomolecular Function Simulation, RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research, 1-6-5 Minatojima-Minamimachi, Chuo-ku, Kobe, Hyogo 650-0047, Japan.
Membrane potential is essential in biological signaling and homeostasis maintained by voltage-sensitive membrane proteins. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations incorporating membrane potentials have been extensively used to study the structures and functions of ion channels and protein pores. They can also be beneficial in designing and characterizing artificial ion channels and pores, which will guide further amino acid sequence optimization through comparison between the predicted models and experimental data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Appl Mater Interfaces
January 2025
Department of Nuclear Medicine, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, 600 Tianhe Road, Guangzhou 510630, China.
Epstein-Barr nuclear antigen 1 (EBNA1), a sequence-specific DNA binding protein of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), is essential for viral genome replication and maintenance and is therefore an attractive target for the therapeutic intervention of EBV-associated cancers. Several EBNA1-specific inhibitors have demonstrated the ability to block EBNA1 function in vitro, but practical delivery strategies for these inhibitors in vivo are still lacking. Here, we report an intelligent hierarchical targeting theranostic nanosystem (denoted as mZGOCS@MnO-P5) that integrates an azide (N3) terminal dual-targeting peptide (N3-P5), a tumor microenvironment-responsive degradable MnO nanosheet, and a mesoporous ZnGaO:Cr, Sn near-infrared persistent luminescence (NIR-PL) nanosphere (mZGOCS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
December 2024
Knight Alzheimer Disease Research Center, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by the aggregation and accumulation of proteins including amyloid-β and tau. We previously compared the immunological milieus in the brain of mice with amyloid deposition or tau aggregation and found that mice with tauopathy but not amyloid developed a unique adaptive immune response with markedly increased activated T cells in areas with tau pathology. T cell depletion blocked tau-mediated neurodegeneration.
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