Published in Biochemistry
S-Adenosylmethionine (SAM+) serves as the principal methylating agent in biological systems, but the thermodynamic basis of its reactivity does not seem to have been clearly established. Here, we show that methionine, methanol, and H+ combine to form S-methylmethionine (SMM+) with a temperature-independent equilibrium constant of 9.9 M-2. The corre...
Published in Biochemistry
Plasmodium falciparum thymidylate kinase (PfTMK) is a critical enzyme in the de novo biosynthesis pathway of pyrimidine nucleotides. N-(5'-Deoxy-α-thymidin-5'-yl)- N'-[4-(2-chlorobenzyloxy)phenyl]urea was developed as an inhibitor of PfTMK and has been reported as an effective inhibitor of P. falciparum growth with an EC50 of 28 nM [Cui, H., et al....
Published in Biochemistry
Protein misfolding due to mutation(s) and/or generation of unstable intermediate state(s) can be the cause of aberrant aggregations, leading to cellular degeneration. While molecular signatures like amyloidogenic regions cause aggregation, other features in proteins, like disorder and unique complexity regions, regulate and restrict such adhesive a...
Published in Biochemistry
Periplasmic cytochrome A (PpcA) is a representative of a broad class of multiheme cytochromes functioning as protein "nanowires" for storage and extracellular transfer of multiple electrons in the δ-proteobacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens. PpcA contains three bis-His coordinated hemes held in a spatial arrangement that is highly conserved among th...
Published in Biochemistry
DNAzymes are catalytic DNA molecules that can perform a variety of reactions. Although advances have been made in obtaining DNAzymes via in vitro selection and many of them have been developed into sensors and imaging agents for metal ions, bacteria, and other molecules, the structural features responsible for these enzymatic reactions are still no...
Published in Biochemistry
Published in Biochemistry
The radical SAM (S-adenosyl-l-methionine) superfamily is one of the largest group of enzymes with >113000 annotated sequences [Landgraf, B. J., et al. (2016) Annu. Rev. Biochem. 85, 485-514]. Members of this superfamily catalyze the reductive cleavage of SAM using an oxygen sensitive 4Fe-4S cluster to transiently generate 5'-deoxyadenosyl radical t...
Published in Biochemistry
Engineered aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs that enable site-specific incorporation of noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) into proteins in living cells have emerged as powerful tools in chemical biology. The Escherichia coli-derived leucyl-tRNA synthetase (EcLeuRS)/tRNA pair is a promising candidate for ncAA mutagenesis in mammalian cells, but it...
Published in Biochemistry
As one of the most intrinsically reactive amino acids, cysteine carries a variety of important biochemical functions, including catalysis and redox regulation. Discovery and characterization of cysteines with heightened reactivity will help annotate protein functions. Chemical proteomic methods have been used to quantitatively profile cysteine reac...
Published in Biochemistry
Nature has produced a diverse range of oxygenases for the modification of secondary metabolites with selectivity profiles that are unmatched by conventional man-made catalysts. In the past two decades, organic chemists have begun to harness the synthetic potential of these biocatalysts to develop efficient chemoenzymatic synthesis of complex natura...
