Crystallographic Trapping of Reaction Intermediates in Quinolinic Acid Synthesis by NadA

10.1021/acschembio.7b01104

2018-04-19

NadA is a multifunctional enzyme that condenses dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP) with iminoaspartate (IA) to generate quinolinic acid (QA), the universal precursor of the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD(P)) cofactor. Using X-ray crystallography, we ha...

Substrate Recognition by a Colistin Resistance Enzyme from Moraxella catarrhalis

10.1021/acschembio.8b00116

2018-04-19

Lipid A phosphoethanolamine (PEtN) transferases render bacteria resistant to the last resort antibiotic colistin. The recent discoveries of pathogenic bacteria harboring plasmid-borne PEtN transferase (mcr) genes have illustrated the serious potential for wid...

Identification of the First Diketomorpholine Biosynthetic Pathway Using FAC-MS Technology

10.1021/acschembio.8b00024

2018-04-17

Filamentous fungi are prolific producers of secondary metabolites with drug-like properties, and their genome sequences have revealed an untapped wealth of potential therapeutic leads. To better access these secondary metabolites and characterize their biosyn...

Dynamics, Conformational Entropy, and Frustration in Protein–Protein Interactions Involving an Intrinsically Disordered Protein Domain

10.1021/acschembio.7b01105

2018-04-16

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are abundant in the eukaryotic proteome. However, little is known about the role of subnanosecond dynamics and the conformational entropy that it represents in protein–protein interactions involving IDPs. Using nuclear...

O-GlcNAcase fragment discovery with fluorescence polarimetry

10.1021/acschembio.8b00183

2018-04-11

The attachment of the sugar D-N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) with to specific serine and threonine residues on proteins is referred to as protein O-GlcNAcylation. O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) is the enzyme responsible for carrying out the modification while O-Glc...

Structure-Based Chemical Design of Abscisic Acid Antagonists That Block PYL–PP2C Receptor Interactions

10.1021/acschembio.8b00105

2018-04-11

In Arabidopsis, signaling of the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA) is mediated by PYR/PYL/RCAR receptors (PYLs), which bind to and inhibit group-A protein phosphatases 2C (PP2Cs), the negative regulators of ABA. X-ray structures of several PYL-ABA and PYL-AB...

Multiple Mechanisms of Zinc-Mediated Inhibition for the Apoptotic Caspases-3, -6, -7, and -8

10.1021/acschembio.8b00064

2018-04-11

Zinc is emerging as a widely used and important biological regulatory signal. Cellular zinc levels are tightly regulated by a complex array of zinc importers and exporters to control processes such as apoptotic cell death. While caspase inhibition by zinc has...

A Common Mechanism Links Activities of Butyrate in the Colon

10.1021/acschembio.8b00073

2018-04-10

Two biological activities of butyrate in the colon (suppression of proliferation of colonic epithelial stem cells and inflammation) correlate with inhibition of the activity of histone deacetylases. Cellular and biochemical studies of molecules similar in str...

Stabilized cyclic peptides as scavengers of autoantibodies: neutralization of anti-citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies in rheumatoid arthritis

10.1021/acschembio.8b00118

2018-04-09

The occurrence of autoantibodies is a hallmark of rheumatoid arthritis, specifically those autoantibodies targeting proteins containing the arginine derived amino acid citrulline. There is strong evidence showing that the occurrence of anti-citrullinated prot...

A Copper Relay System Involving Two Periplasmic Chaperones Drives cbb3-Type Cytochrome c Oxidase Biogenesis in Rhodobacter capsulatus

10.1021/acschembio.8b00293

2018-04-09

PccA and SenC are periplasmic copper chaperones required for the biogenesis of cbb3-type cytochrome c oxidase (cbb3-Cox) in Rhodobacter capsulatus at physiological Cu concentrations. However, both proteins are dispensable for cbb3-Cox assembly when the extern...