Search results for "Biomolecules"
showing 10 items of 549 documents
The Boson Peak of Amyloid Fibrils: Probing the Softness of Protein Aggregates by Inelastic Neutron Scattering
2014
Proteins and polypeptides are characterized by low-frequency vibrations in the terahertz regime responsible for the so-called "boson peak". The shape and position of this peak are related to the mechanical properties of peptide chains. Amyloid fibrils are ordered macromolecular assemblies, spontaneously formed in nature, characterized by unique biological and nanomechanical properties. In this work, we investigate the effects of the amyloid state and its polymorphism on the boson peak. We used inelastic neutron scattering to probe low-frequency vibrations of the glucagon polypeptide in the native state and in two different amyloid morphologies in both dry and hydrated sample states. The dat…
Affinity Sensors for the Diagnosis of COVID-19
2021
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was proclaimed a global pandemic in March 2020. Reducing the dissemination rate, in particular by tracking the infected people and their contacts, is the main instrument against infection spreading. Therefore, the creation and implementation of fast, reliable and responsive methods suitable for the diagnosis of COVID-19 are required. These needs can be fulfilled using affinity sensors, which differ in applied detection methods and markers that are generating analytical signals. Recently, nucleic acid hybridization, antigen-antibody interaction, and change of reactive oxyge…
Medicinal Mushrooms: Bioactive Compounds, Use, and Clinical Trials
2021
Medicinal mushrooms have important health benefits and exhibit a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities, including antiallergic, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, antiviral, cytotoxic, immunomodulating, antidepressive, antihyperlipidemic, antidiabetic, digestive, hepatoprotective, neuroprotective, nephroprotective, osteoprotective, and hypotensive activities. The growing interest in mycotherapy requires a strong commitment from the scientific community to expand clinical trials and to propose supplements of safe origin and genetic purity. Bioactive compounds of selected medicinal mushrooms and their effects and mechanisms in in vitro and in vivo clinical stu…
Caractérisation des figures myéliniques associées à l'accumulation de lipides polaires induites par différents oxystérols cytotoxiques identifiés dan…
2006
Atherosclerosis is a complex and chronic arterial process which is characterized by a remodeling of the vascular wall, associated with inflammatory reactions, proliferation and cell death process, and with accumulation of oxidized lipids among which oxysterols (cholesterol oxidation products) which might play key roles in the initiation and development of atheromatous lesions. Our work performed on U937 and THP1 promonocytic cells, rat aorta embryonic A7R5 cells, and breast carcinoma MCF7 cells (caspase-3 deficient). Different oxysterols, present in large quantity in atheromatous lesions, were used: 7-cétocholestérol (7KC), 7Β-hydroxycholestérol, 25-hydroxycholestérol, cholestérol-5Α, 6Α-ep…
Calculation of phase diagrams not requiring the derivatives of the Gibbs energy demonstrated for a mixture of two homopolymers with the corresponding…
1995
A method is presented which allows the calculation of phase diagrams (spinodal, binodal and tie lines) on the basis of the Gibbs energy of mixing ΔG. No derivatives of ΔG with respect to the composition variables are required. This method is particularly useful in cases where the composition dependence of ΔG is very complex and no analytical representation of the derivatives can be given. The method is applied to a ternary mixture of two homopolymers with a copolymer consisting of the same monomers. The sequence distribution of the copolymer is kept constant between random and purely alternating, and phase diagrams are calculated for different chemical compositions of the copolymer. The com…
Thermodynamics of a polymer blend solution system studied by gel permeation chromatography and viscosity
1999
Binary and ternary interaction parameters and their derivatives have been calculated with the Flory-Huggins formalism developed for a ternary polymer system. The equilibrium compositions of the ternary system tetrahydrofuran/polybutadiene/polystyrene that forms two phases in equilibrium at 25°C have been used to solve the binodal equations. With this set of parameters, the viscosimetric interaction parameters have been computed. For the sake of comparison, the experimental viscosimetric parameter has been determined from intrinsic viscosity data of a polymer (3) in a "binary solvent" (solvent + polymer (2)). It has been clearly shown that composition-dependent parameters are necessary to re…
Polymer Incompatibility Caused by Different Molecular Architectures: Modeling via Chain Connectivity and Conformational Relaxation
2009
The calculation of phase diagrams for blends of linear and branched polymers made up of identical monomeric units is modeled using an approach that subdivides the mixing process into two steps: i) contact formation between the different components, keeping their chain conformations and the volume of the system constant; and, ii) relaxation of the macromolecules into their equilibrium state by molecular rearrangements. It is assumed that step (ii) causes shape-induced polymer incompatibility and that the degree of branching can be quantified in terms of the volumes the isolated coils of the branched polymer occupy in relation to the volume the linear product with the same molecular weight oc…
Ultrafast myoglobin structural dynamics observed with an X-ray free-electron laser.
2014
Light absorption can trigger biologically relevant protein conformational changes. The light-induced structural rearrangement at the level of a photoexcited chromophore is known to occur in the femtosecond timescale and is expected to propagate through the protein as a quake-like intramolecular motion. Here we report direct experimental evidence of such ‘proteinquake’ observed in myoglobin through femtosecond X-ray solution scattering measurements performed at the Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray free-electron laser. An ultrafast increase of myoglobin radius of gyration occurs within 1 picosecond and is followed by a delayed protein expansion. As the system approaches equilibrium it underg…
Production, fonction et localisation d'Orchestine: calciprotéine spécifique de la matrice organique des structures minéralisées élaborées par le crus…
2002
As most Crustaceans, Orchestia cavimana possesses a mineralized exoskeleton which is periodically replaced. Because of the terrestrial behaviours of this animal, this molting cycle is related to calcium storage and resorption processes. Calcium storage occurs, as calcareous concretions, in diverticula of the midgut called posterior cæca. Calcareous concretions are essentially composed of amorphous calcium carbonate precipitated within a proteinaceous organic matrix composed of a soluble fraction and an insoluble one in an EDTA-buffer. Among the soluble components of the organic matrix, a previous study led to characterize a polypeptide of 23 kDa in SDS-PAGE called Orchestin. This protein, w…
A photoswitchable helical peptide with light-controllable interface/transmembrane topology in lipidic membranes
2021
Summary The spontaneous insertion of helical transmembrane (TM) polypeptides into lipid bilayers is driven by three sequential equilibria: solution-to-membrane interface (MI) partition, unstructured-to-helical folding, and MI-to-TM helix insertion. A bottleneck for understanding these three steps is the lack of experimental approaches to perturb membrane-bound hydrophobic polypeptides out of equilibrium rapidly and reversibly. Here, we report on a 24-residues-long hydrophobic α-helical polypeptide, covalently coupled to an azobenzene photoswitch (KCALP-azo), which displays a light-controllable TM/MI equilibrium in hydrated lipid bilayers. FTIR spectroscopy reveals that trans KCALP-azo folds…