g. trypsin – Fig. 4c). The active site of MGL is more comparable in size to that of HsaD (Fig. 4d). Noncovalent inhibitors of MGL are thus significantly larger than those of serine proteases (e.g. compare pristimerin and benzamidine –Fig. S1) and fill more of the HsaD active site and thus have lower IC50 values. The lipophilicity of the inhibitors also has a direct effect with the more hydrophobic inhibitors, for example Selleck PI3K inhibitor pristimerin, being favoured over charged ones, for example neostigmine, due to the apolar nature of the HsaD active site. The aim of this work was to identify leads

for fragment-based drug design (Scott et al., 2012). DCI has emerged as a good covalent inhibitor with a low IC50 value (Fig. 1a), it is however limited in its usefulness due to its ability to inhibit a broad range of enzymes (Hedstrom, 2002). Structural studies are ongoing to determine the mode of binding of DCI within the active site to improve specificity. We would like to thank Dr David Staunton (Biochemistry, Oxford University) for carrying out the mass spectroscopy

for this manuscript. We would also like to thank Dr Edward Lowe (Biochemistry, Oxford University) for his help with the data collection and structure selleck products solution. “
“Interactions of silver phosphate nanoparticles (SPNPs) and selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) with Staphylococcus aureus cultures have been studied at the cellular, molecular and protein level. Significant antibacterial effects of both SPNPs and SeNPs on S. aureus were observed. At a concentration of 300 μM, SPNPs caused 37.5% inhibition of bacterial growth and SeNPs totally inhibited bacterial growth. As these effects might have been performed due to the interactions of nanoparticles with DNA and proteins, the interaction of SPNPs or SeNPs with the amplified MYO10 zntR gene was studied. The presence of nanoparticles decreased the melting temperatures of the nanoparticle complexes with the zntR gene by 23% for SeNPs and by 12% for SPNPs in comparison with the control value. The concentration of bacterial

metallothionein was 87% lower in bacteria after application of SPNPs (6.3 μg mg−1 protein) but was increased by 29% after addition of SeNPs (63 μg mg−1 protein) compared with the S. aureus control (49 μg mg−1 protein). Significant antimicrobial effects of the nanoparticles on bacterial growth and DNA integrity provide a promising approach to reducing the risk of bacterial infections that cannot be controlled by the usual antibiotic treatments. “
“Aspergillus niger represents a promising host for the expression of recombinant proteins, but only a few expression systems are available for this organism. In this study, the inducible catalase promoter (PcatR) from A. niger was characterized. For this, constructs were developed and checked for the expression of the alkaline xylanase gene transcriptionally fused under the cat R promoter. Two versions of the catalase (catR) promoter sequence from A.