Adaptive Assembly: Maximizing the Potential of a Given Functional Peptide with a Tailor-Made Protein Scaffold.

Protein engineering that exploits known functional peptides holds great promise for generating novel functional proteins. Here we propose a combinatorial approach, termed adaptive assembly, which provides a tailor-made protein scaffold for a given functional peptide. A combinatorial library was designed to create a tailor-made scaffold, which was generated from β hairpins derived from a 10-residue minimal protein "chignolin" and randomized amino acid sequences.

Frequency characteristics of neuromagnetic auditory steady-state responses to sinusoidally amplitude-modulated sweep tones.

Objective: This study aimed to capture the neuronal frequency characteristics, as indexed by the auditory steady-state response (ASSR), relative to physical characteristics of constant sound pressure levels (SPLs). Relationship with perceptual characteristics (loudness model) was also examined.

Methods: Neuromagnetic 40-Hz ASSR was recorded in response to sinusoidally amplitude-modulated sweep tones with carrier frequency covering the frequency range of 0.

GUIDANCE2: accurate detection of unreliable alignment regions accounting for the uncertainty of multiple parameters.

Inference of multiple sequence alignments (MSAs) is a critical part of phylogenetic and comparative genomics studies. However, from the same set of sequences different MSAs are often inferred, depending on the methodologies used and the assumed parameters. Much effort has recently been devoted to improving the ability to identify unreliable alignment regions.

Relationship between human evolution and neurally mediated syncope disclosed by the polymorphic sites of the adrenergic receptor gene α2B-AR.

The objective of this study was to clarify the effects of disease on neurally mediated syncope (NMS) during an acute stress reaction. We analyzed the mechanism of the molecular interaction and the polymorphisms of the alpha-2 adrenoreceptor (α2B-AR) gene as the potential psychiatric cause of incentive stress. We focused on the following three genotypes of the repeat polymorphism site at Glu 301-303 in the α2B-AR gene: Glu12/12, Glu12/9, and Glu9/9.

Functional lysophosphatidic acid receptors expressed in Oryzias latipes.

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) signaling is known to play biological and pathophysiological roles in many types of animals. Medaka (Oryzias latipes) is an experimental fish that can be easily maintained, propagated, and analyzed, and whose genome has been completely sequenced. However, there is limited information available regarding medaka LPA receptors.

Heat-induced irreversible denaturation of the camelid single domain VHH antibody is governed by chemical modifications.

The variable domain of camelid heavy chain antibody (VHH) is highly heat-resistant and is therefore ideal for many applications. Although understanding the process of heat-induced irreversible denaturation is essential to improve the efficacy of VHH, its inactivation mechanism remains unclear. Here, we showed that chemical modifications predominantly governed the irreversible denaturation of VHH at high temperatures.

Persistent and stable gene expression by a cytoplasmic RNA replicon based on a noncytopathic variant Sendai virus.

Persistent and stable expression of foreign genes has been achieved in mammalian cells by integrating the genes into the host chromosomes. However, this approach has several shortcomings in practical applications. For example, large scale production of protein pharmaceutics frequently requires laborious amplification of the inserted genes to optimize the gene expression.