Search results for "Glycophorin"

2014

As traditional detergents might destabilize or even denature membrane proteins, amphiphilic polymers have moved into the focus of membrane-protein research in recent years. Thus far, Amphipols are the best studied amphiphilic copolymers, having a hydrophilic backbone with short hydrophobic chains. However, since stabilizing as well as destabilizing effects of the Amphipol belt on the structure of membrane proteins have been described, we systematically analyze the impact of the most commonly used Amphipol A8-35 on the structure and stability of a well-defined transmembrane protein model, the glycophorin A transmembrane helix dimer. Amphipols are not able to directly extract proteins from th…

An Alternative to the Human Hemoglobin Test in the Investigation of Bloodstains Treated with Active Oxygen: The Human Glycophorin A Test

2011

In criminal investigations, there are three stages involved when studying bloodstains: search and orientation, confirmation, and individualization. Confirmatory tests have two aims: to show that the stain contains a human biological fluid and to confirm the type of biological fluid. The need to determine the nature of the evidence is reflected in the latest bibliography, where the possibility of employing mRNA and miRNA markers for this purpose is proposed. While these new proposals are being investigated, the kits for determining human hemoglobin currently provide a simple solution for resolving this issue. With these kits, the possibility of obtaining false positives and false negatives i…

The membrane environment modulates self-association of the human GpA TM domain--implications for membrane protein folding and transmembrane signaling.

2010

Abstract The influence of lipid bilayer properties on a defined and sequence-specific transmembrane helix–helix interaction is not well characterized yet. To study the potential impact of changing bilayer properties on a sequence-specific transmembrane helix–helix interaction, we have traced the association of fluorescent-labeled glycophorin A transmembrane peptides by fluorescence spectroscopy in model membranes with varying lipid compositions. The observed changes of the glycophorin A dimerization propensities in different lipid bilayers suggest that the lipid bilayer thickness severely influences the monomer–dimer equilibrium of this transmembrane domain, and dimerization was most effici…

Influence of hydrophobic matching on association of model transmembrane fragments containing a minimised glycophorin A dimerisation motif

2005

AbstractThe principles that govern the folding and packing of membrane proteins are still not completely understood. In the present work, we have revisited the glycophorin A (GpA) dimerisation motif that mediates transmembrane (TM) helix association, one of the best-suited models of membrane protein oligomerisation. By using artificial polyleucine TM segments we have demonstrated in this study that a pattern of only five amino acids (GVxxGVxxT) promotes specific dimerisation. Further, we have used this minimised GpA motif to assess the influence of hydrophobic matching on the TM helix packing process in detergent micelles and found that this factor modulates helix–helix association and/or d…

Polar/Ionizable Residues in Transmembrane Segments: Effects on Helix-Helix Packing

2012

The vast majority of membrane proteins are anchored to biological membranes through hydrophobic alpha-helices. Sequence analysis of high-resolution membrane protein structures show that ionizable amino acid residues are present in transmembrane (TM) helices, often with a functional and/or structural role. Here, using as scaffold the hydrophobic TM domain of the model membrane protein glycophorin A (GpA), we address the consequences of replacing specific residues by ionizable amino acids on TM helix insertion and packing, both in detergent micelles and in biological membranes. Our findings demonstrate that ionizable residues are stably inserted in hydrophobic environments, and tolerated in t…

Antitumor Vaccines Based on Synthetic Mucin Glycopeptides

2011

The interest in tumor-associated glycoconjugate antigens was particularly initiated by Springer, who published in 1984 that glycoproteins on the outer cell-membrane of epithelial tumor cells have an altered glycosylation consisting of the Thomsen-Friedenreich (T-) antigen and its precursor the TN-antigen structure (Springer 1984). He and his coworkers also had found that monoclonal antibodies induced with glycoproteins from tumor cell membranes showed cross-reactivity to desialylated glycophorin A. It was concluded from these observations that the T-and TN-glycoproteins on the epithelial tumor cells must be structurally related to asialoglycophorin A (Springer et al. 1983) (Fig. 11.1a). Gly…

The AQP2 mutation V71M causesnephrogenic diabetes insipidus in humans but does not impair the function of a bacterial homolog

2015

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