A cDNA encoding elastase was isolated from Steinernema carpocapsae by suppression subtractive hybridization and rapid amplification of 5' cDNA ends. The predicted protein contained a 19-aa signal peptide, a 44-aa N-terminal propeptide, and a 264-aa mature protein with a predicted molecular mass of 28,949 Da and a theoretical pI of 8.88. BLAST analysis showed 27-35% amino acid sequence identity to serine proteases from insects, mammals, fish and other organisms. The Sc-ela gene contains three exons and two introns with at least two copies in the S. carpocapsae genome. Expression analysis indicated that the Sc-ela gene was upregulated during the initial parasitic stage. Sequence comparison and evolutionary marker analysis revealed that Sc-ELA was a member of the elastase serine protease family with potential degradative, developmental and fibrinolytic activities. Homology modeling showed that Sc-ELA adopts a two beta-barrel fold typical of trypsin-like serine proteases, and phylogenetic analysis indicates that Sc-ELA branched off early during elastase evolution.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.exppara.2009.01.014 | DOI Listing |
Brief Bioinform
November 2024
School of Engineering, Westlake University, No. 600 Dunyu Road, 310030 Zhejiang, P.R. China.
Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) offers remarkable insights into cellular development and differentiation by capturing the gene expression profiles of individual cells. The role of dimensionality reduction and visualization in the interpretation of scRNA-seq data has gained widely acceptance. However, current methods face several challenges, including incomplete structure-preserving strategies and high distortion in embeddings, which fail to effectively model complex cell trajectories with multiple branches.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrief Bioinform
November 2024
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mathematical and Neural Dynamical Systems, Great Bay University, No. 16 Daxue Rd, Songshanhu District, Dongguan, Guangdong, 523000, China.
Multimodal omics provide deeper insight into the biological processes and cellular functions, especially transcriptomics and proteomics. Computational methods have been proposed for the integration of single-cell multimodal omics of transcriptomics and proteomics. However, existing methods primarily concentrate on the alignment of different omics, overlooking the unique information inherent in each omics type.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHum Gene Ther
January 2025
Department of Internal Medicine V, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein and University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany.
Adeno-associated viral (AAV) vectors are increasingly used for preclinical and clinical cardiac gene therapy approaches. However, gene transfer to cardiomyocytes poses a challenge due to differences between AAV serotypes in terms of expression efficiency and . For example, AAV9 vectors work well in rodent heart muscle cells but not in cultivated neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes (NRVCMs), necessitating the use of AAV6 vectors for studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Immunol
January 2025
Department of Nephrology, Sir Run Run Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.
Rationale: Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a clinical syndrome associated with a multitude of conditions. Although renal replacement therapy (RRT) remains the cornerstone of treatment for advanced AKI, its implementation can potentially pose risks and may not be readily accessible across all healthcare settings and regions. Elevated lactate levels are implicated in sepsis-induced AKI; however, it remains unclear whether increased lactate directly induces AKI or elucidates the underlying mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Immunol
January 2025
Department of Hematology and Cancer Institute (Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Intervention, China National Ministry of Education), The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Immune dysfunction is one of the hallmarks of cancer and plays critical roles in immunotherapy resistance, but there is no serum biomarker that can be used to evaluate immune-dysfunction status of cancer patients. Here, we identified subtype-specific human endogenous retrovirus K102 envelope (HERV-K102-Env) with immunosuppressive activity in circulating blood as a novel serum immunosuppressive biomarker of cancer. We first generated monoclonal antibodies against K102-Env with high sensitivity and specificity, and we developed an ELISA assay to detect serum K102-Env.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!