Search results for " Dynamics"
showing 10 items of 4108 documents
Parsimonious Scenario for the Emergence of Viroid-Like Replicons De Novo
2019
This article belongs to the Special Issue Viroid-2018: International Conference on Viroids and Viroid-Like RNAs. Viroids are small, non-coding, circular RNA molecules that infect plants. Different hypotheses for their evolutionary origin have been put forward, such as an early emergence in a precellular RNA World or several de novo independent evolutionary origins in plants. Here, we discuss the plausibility of de novo emergence of viroid-like replicons by giving theoretical support to the likelihood of different steps along a parsimonious evolutionary pathway. While Avsunviroidae-like structures are relatively easy to obtain through evolution of a population of random RNA sequences of fixe…
How Can Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist Modulate Distinct Cell Death Pathways?
2018
Multiple mechanisms of cell death exist (apoptosis, necroptosis, pyroptosis) and the subtle balance of several distinct proteins and inhibitors tightly regulates the cell fate toward one or the other pathway. Here, by combining coimmunoprecipitation, enzyme assays, and molecular simulations, we ascribe a new role, within this entangled regulatory network, to the interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra). Our study enlightens that IL-1Ra, which usually inhibits the inflammatory effects of IL-1α/β by binding to IL-1 receptor, under advanced pathological states prevents apoptosis and/or necroptosis by noncompetitively inhibiting the activity of caspase-8 and -9. Consensus docking, followed by…
Searching for Chymase Inhibitors among Chamomile Compounds Using a Computational-Based Approach
2018
Inhibitors of chymase have good potential to provide a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. We used a computational approach based on pharmacophore modeling, docking, and molecular dynamics simulations to evaluate the potential ability of 13 natural compounds from chamomile extracts to bind chymase enzyme. The results indicated that some chamomile compounds can bind to the active site of human chymase. In particular, chlorogenic acid had a predicted binding energy comparable or even better than that of some known chymase inhibitors, interacted stably with key amino acids in the chymase active site, and appeared to be more selective for chymase than other …
Permeating disciplines: Overcoming barriers between molecular simulations and classical structure-function approaches in biological ion transport
2017
Ion translocation across biological barriers is a fundamental requirement for life. In many cases, controlling this process-for example with neuroactive drugs-demands an understanding of rapid and reversible structural changes in membrane-embedded proteins, including ion channels and transporters. Classical approaches to electrophysiology and structural biology have provided valuable insights into several such proteins over macroscopic, often discontinuous scales of space and time. Integrating these observations into meaningful mechanistic models now relies increasingly on computational methods, particularly molecular dynamics simulations, while surfacing important challenges in data manage…
Insights into the inhibited form of the redox-sensitive SufE-like sulfur acceptor CsdE
2017
17 p.-8 fig.
Evaluating the stability of pharmacophore features using molecular dynamics simulations.
2016
Abstract Molecular dynamics simulations of twelve protein—ligand systems were used to derive a single, structure based pharmacophore model for each system. These merged models combine the information from the initial experimental structure and from all snapshots saved during the simulation. We compared the merged pharmacophore models with the corresponding PDB pharmacophore models, i.e., the static models generated from an experimental structure in the usual manner. The frequency of individual features, of feature types and the occurrence of features not present in the static model derived from the experimental structure were analyzed. We observed both pharmacophore features not visible in …
Different Within-Host Viral Evolution Dynamics in Severely Immunosuppressed Cases with Persistent SARS-CoV-2
2021
12 páginas, 2 figuras, 1 tabla.
New Approach of Controlling Cardiac Alternans
2018
The alternans of the cardiac action potential duration is a pathological rhythm. It is considered to be relating to the onset of ventricular fibrillation and sudden cardiac death. It is well known that, the predictive control is among the control methods that use the chaos to stabilize the unstable fixed point. Firstly, we show that alternans (or period-2 orbit) can be suppressed temporally by the predictive control of the periodic state of the system. Secondly, we determine an estimation of the size of a restricted attraction's basin of the unstable equilibrium point representing the unstable regular rhythm stabilized by the control. This result allows the application of predictive control…
Recent advances on CDK inhibitors: An insight by means of in silico methods
2017
The cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs) are a small family of serine/threonine protein kinases that can act as a potential therapeutic target in several proliferative diseases, including cancer. This short review is a survey on the more recent research progresses in the field achieved by using in silico methods. All the "armamentarium" available to the medicinal chemists (docking protocols and molecular dynamics, fragment-based, de novo design, virtual screening, and QSAR) has been employed to the discovery of new, potent, and selective inhibitors of cyclin dependent kinases. The results cited herein can be useful to understand the nature of the inhibitor-target interactions, and furnish an ins…
Zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance of chemically exchanging systems.
2019
Zero- to ultralow-field (ZULF) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is an emerging tool for precision chemical analysis. In this work, we study dynamic processes and investigate the influence of chemical exchange on ZULF NMR J-spectra. We develop a computational approach that allows quantitative calculation of J-spectra in the presence of chemical exchange and apply it to study aqueous solutions of [15N]ammonium (15N\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\mathrm{H}}_4^ +$$\end{document}H4+) as a model syst…