21 results found for disease

The selective degradation of many short-lived proteins in eukaryotic cells is carried out by the ubiquitin-mediated proteolytic system. In this pathway, proteins are targeted for degradation by covalent ligation to ubiquitin, a highly conserved small....

This lecture starts out with a very brief review of the history of protein crystallography and continue with our studies since 1970 on proteolytic enzymes and their control. Proteolytic enzymes catalyse a very simple chemical reaction, the hydrolytic....

Research, at least my research, has never been linear. I have found that my lab and I often double back on problems after years of inactivity or go off in entirely new directions as dictated by the work and peoples interests. This lack of direction....

The role of nitric oxide in cellular signaling in the past three decades has become one of the most rapidly growing areas in biology. Nitric oxide is a gas and a free radical with an unshared electron that can regulate an ever-growing list of biolog....

Biological membranes define and compartmentalize the cells of higher organisms. Consisting of membrane proteins and lipids, they are basically impermeable for ions and polar substances, so that electric voltages (_membrane potentialsî) and substanc....

For cancer diagnosis and therapy, we are developing activatable cell-penetrating peptides (ACPPs), synthetic molecules with a novel amplifying mechanism for homing to diseased tissues. ACPPs are polycationic cell-penetrating peptides whose cellular ....

Aquaporin (AQP) water channel proteins enable high water permeability in certain biological membranes. Discovered in human red cells but expressed in multiple tissues, AQP1 has been thoroughly characterized and its atomic structure is known. Expres....

Analysis of the immune system is fascinating and progressing rapidly. As a field of medical enquiry, it has however, drifted and turned purely academic. This is because interest and appreciation of protective immunity in infectious disease medicine....

Since the first cases of AIDS in 1981 and the identification of its etiological agent in 1983, much progress has been made in both the development of tools to prevent and treat HIV infection and the access to these tools. In particular, the wide arr....

It is now axiomatic that, no matter what its causes, cancer ultimately arises from the malfunction of genes. A number of clues prefigured this paradigm: the persistence of the malignant phenotype through countless cell divisions; the mutagenicity of....

The epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori continues to be an area of discovery and controversy in the 21st century. The transmission of this bacterium from mother to child allows Helicobacter DNA to mimic the evolution of maternal mitochondria DNA. B....

Infectious microbes collectively represent the strongest selective pressure operating on our species, and over hundreds of millions of years, drove the evolution of the sophisticated immune system we have today. While the general outlines of immune ....