The popular genetic model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) encodes 34 globins, whereby the few that are well-characterized show divergent properties besides the typical oxygen carrier function. Here, we present a biophysical characterization and expression analysis of C. elegans globin-3 (GLB-3). GLB-3 is predicted to exist in two isofo...
Published in Briefings in bioinformatics
Antibodies are essential to life, and knowing their structures can facilitate the understanding of antibody-antigen recognition mechanisms. Precise antibody structure prediction has been a core challenge for a prolonged period, especially the accuracy of H3 loop prediction. Despite recent progress, existing methods cannot achieve atomic accuracy, e...
Published in Journal of inherited metabolic disease
Pyruvate dehydrogenase complex deficiency is a major cause of primary lactic acidemia resulting in high morbidity and mortality, with limited therapeutic options. PDHA1 mutations are responsible for >82% of cases. The E1 component of PDC is a symmetric dimer of heterodimers (αβ/α'β') encoded by PDHA1 and PDHB. We measured solvent accessibility surf...
RNA interference (RNAi) is the major antiviral mechanism in plants and invertebrates, but the absence of detectable viral (v)siRNAs in mammalian cells upon viral infection has questioned the functional relevance of this pathway in mammalian immunity. We designed a series of peptides specifically targeting enterovirus A71 (EV-A71)-encoded protein 3A...
Published in Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease
Iron is an essential element for life. Its uptake and utility requires a careful balancing with its toxic capacity, with mammals evolving a safe and bio-viable means of its transport and storage. This transport and storage is also utilized as part of the iron-sequestration arsenal employed by the mammalian hosts’ ‘nutritional immunity’ against para...
Sea anemones produce proteinaceous toxins for predation and defense, including peptide toxins that act on a large variety of ion channels of pharmacological and biomedical interest. Phymanthus crucifer is commonly found in the Caribbean Sea; however, the chemical structure and biological activity of its toxins remain unknown, with the exception of ...
The asymmetric cell divisions necessary for stomatal lineage initiation and progression in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) require the function of the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor SPEECHLESS (SPCH). Mutants lacking SPCH do not produce stomata or lineages. Here, we isolated a new spch-5 allele carrying a point mutation in th...
Published in Frontiers in Plant Science
Cell–cell communication plays a crucial role in plant growth and development and relies to a large extent on peptide ligand–receptor kinase signaling mechanisms. The CRINKLY4 (CR4) family of receptor-like kinases is involved in a wide range of developmental processes in plants, including mediating columella stem cell identity and differentiation in...
FAPESP [Brazilian Government] [07/56525-3, 06/02892-2]
FAPESP [Brazilian Government] [07/56525-3, 06/02892-2]
