• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.62-68
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• 2014

Coptis chinensis 3'-hydroxy-N-methylcoclaurine 4'-O-methyltransferase (HOMT), an essential enzyme in the berberine biosynthetic pathway, catalyzes the methylation of 3'-hydroxy-N-methylcoclaurine (HMC) producing reticuline. A 3D model of HOMT was constructed by homology modeling and further subjected to docking with its ligands and molecular dynamics simulations. The 3D structure of HOMT revealed unique structural features which permitted the methylation of HMC. The methylation of HMC was proposed to proceed by deprotonation of the 4'-hydroxyl group via His257 and Asp258 of HOMT, followed by a nucleophilic attack on the SAM-methyl group resulting in reticuline. HOMT showed high substrate specificity for methylation of HMC. The study evidenced that Gly117, Thr312 and Asp258 in HOMT might be the key residues for orienting substrate for specific catalysis.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.23-29
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• 1993

A bacterial strain. producing a nucleoside oxidase was isolated from soil and identified as Flavobacterium meningosepticum by its taxonomical characteristics. The enzyme has been purified ISO-fold to electrophoretic homogeniety in an overall yield of 18% from the cell free extract of the producer. The enzyme catalyzed oxidation of only nucleosides related to both purine and pyrimidine with very high substrate specificity. The nucleoside oxidase was proved to be a noble enzyme by stoichiometry that 1 mol adenosine as a substrate was especially oxidized via adenosine 5' -aldehyde to 1 mol adenosine 5' -carboxylic acid with the formation of 2 mol $H_20_2$

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.12
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• pp.4169-4172
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• 2012

To elucidate the roles of cysteine residues in rice Phi-class GST F3, in this study, all three cysteine residues were replaced with alanine by site-directed mutagenesis in order to obtain mutants C22A, C73A and C77A. Three mutant enzymes were expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to electrophoretic homogeneity by affinity chromatography on immobilized GSH. The substitutions of Cys73 and Cys77 residues in OsGSTF3 with alanine did not affect the glutathione conjugation activities, showing non-essentiality of these residues. On the other hand, the substitution of Cys22 residue with alanine resulted in approximately a 60% loss of specific activity toward ethacrynic acid. Moreover, the ${K_m}^{CDNB}$ value of the mutant C22A was approximately 2.2 fold larger than that of the wild type. From these results, the evolutionally conserved cysteine 22 residue seems to participate rather in the structural stability of the active site in OsGSTF3 by stabilizing the electrophilic substrates-binding site's conformation than in the substrate binding directly.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.233-240
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• 1969

The synthesis is described of new pepsin substrates of benzyloxycarbonyl-glycyl-L-tyrosyl-L-phenylalanyl-glycine ethyl ester and benzyloxycarbonyl-glycyl-L-tyrosyl-L-phenylalanyl-glycine for studies on the specificity of pepsin, and thin layer chromatographic examination of the peptides prepared showed the new substrates are homogeneous and also, same examination of the incubation mixtures showed that two synthetic substrates are cleaved by pepsin at the L-tyrosyl-L-phenylalanyl bond and hydrolysis of these substrates by pepsin is achieved without transpeptidation. It is found that synthetic peptides are moderately soluble with the amount of the substrate up to a concentration of 0.7 mM in aqueous sodium citrate buffers (0.04 M) in the pH range 1.8-4.0, thus obviating the necessity for the adding of an organic solvent in the assay mixture. The kinetic parameters for synthetic substrates are tabulated in the following table. The data in the table indicate that the susceptibility of synthetic peptides to peptic hydrolysis are relatively large and the change of the carboxyl-terminal group of synthetic substrate from glycine ethyl ester to glycine causes a small decrease in the susceptibility of the L-tyrosyl-L-phenylalanyl bond.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.218-227
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• 2000

Bone morphogenetic protein 1 (BMP-1) is part of a complex capable of inducing ectopic bone formation in mammals. Studies on TGF-β1 processing and Drosophila dorsal-ventral patterning have focused attention on BMP-1 as important in mediating the biological activity of this bone inducing complex. Herein, the bacterial expression, refolding, purification, and initial characterization of the BMP-1 proteolytic domain (BPD) are described. A semi-quantitative fluorescence-based thin layer chromatography assay was developed to assist in rapidly screening for optimal renaturation conditions. According to a preliminary screen for optimal conditions for the refolding of BPD , a detectable proteolytic activity against a high turnover substrate for astacin, a homologous protease from crayfish was observed. The conditions identified have allowed the expression of sufficient amounts of BPD for the characterization of the protein. Its proteolytic activity exhibits the same cleavage specificity as astacin against seven substrates that were previously synthesized for studying astacin. Furthermore, this activity is inhibited by the metal chelator 1,10-phenanthroline but not by its analogue 1,7-phenanthroline. The collagenase inhibitor Pro-Leu-Gly hydroxamate was found to inhibit both astacin and BPD activity. The results presented in this paper argue that BMP-1 does in fact possess an intrinsic proteolytic activity.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.917-922
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• 2012

Homology modeling of Streptomyces peucetius CYP147F1 was constructed using three cytochrome P450 structures, CYP107L1, CYPVdh, and CYPeryF, as templates. The lowest energy SPCYP147F1 model was then assessed for stereochemical quality and side-chain environment by Accelrys Discovery Studio 3.1 software. Further activesite optimization of the SPCYP147F1 was performed by molecular dynamics to generate the final SPCYP147F1 model. The substrate limonene was then docked into the model. The model-limonene complex was used to validate the active-site architecture, and functionally important residues within the substrate recognition site were identified by subsequent characterization of the secondary structure. The docking of limonene suggested that SPCYP147F1 would have broad specificity with the ligand based on the two different orientations of limonene within the active site facing to the heme. Limonene with C7 facing the heme with distance of $3.4{\AA}$ from the Fe was predominant.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.77-83
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• 2001

To gain further insight into the relationship between structure and function of glutathione S-transferase (GST), the four cysteine mutants, C14S, C47S, C101S and C169S, of human GST P1-1 were expressed in Escherichia coli and purified to electrophoretic homogeneity by affinity chromatography on immobilized glutathione (GSH). The catalytic activities of the four mutant enzymes were characterized with five different substrates as well as by their binding to four different inhibitors. Cys14 seems to participate in the catalytic reaction of GST by stabilizing the conformation of the active-site loop, not in the GSH binding directly. The substitution of Cys47 with serine significantly reduces the affinity of GSH binding, although it does not prevent GSH binding. On the other hand, the substitution of Cys101 with serine appears to change the binding affinity of electrophilic substrate by inducing a conformational change of the $\alpha-helix$ D. Cys169 seems to be important for maintaining the stable conformation of the enzyme. In addition, all four cysteine residues are not needed for the steroid isomerase activity of human glutathione S-transferase P1-1.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.1270-1275
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• 2024

Human gut bacterium Dorea sp. MRG-IFC3 is unique in that it is capable of metabolizing puerarin, an isoflavone C-glycoside, whereas it shows broad substrate glycosidase activity for the various flavonoid O-glycosides. To address the question on the substrate specificity, as well as biochemical characteristics, cell-free biotransformation of flavonoid glycosides was performed under various conditions. The results showed that there are two different enzyme systems responsible for the metabolism of flavonoid C-glycosides and O-glycosides in the MRG-IFC3 strain. The system responsible for the conversion of puerarin was inducible and comprised of two enzymes. One enzyme oxidizes puerarin to 3"-oxo-puerarin and the other enzyme converts 3"-oxo-puearin to daidzein. The second enzyme was only active toward 3"-oxo-puerarin. The activity of puerarin conversion to daidzein was enhanced in the presence of Mn²⁺ and NAD⁺. It was concluded that the puerarin C-deglycosylation by Dorea sp. MRG-IFC3 possibly adopts the same biochemical mechanism as the strain PUE, a species of Dorea longicatena.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.455-462
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• 2016

Pseudomonas aeruginosa P-5 is an unusual organism capable of synthesizing polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) consisting of 3-hydroxyvalerate (3HV) and medium-chain-length (MCL) 3-hydroxyalkanoate (3HA) monomer units when C-odd alkanoic acids are fed as the sole carbon source. Evaluation of the substrate chain-length specificity of two P. aeruginosa P-5 PHA synthases ($PhaC1_{P-5}$ and $PhaC2_{P-5}$) by heterologous expression of $PhaC1_{P-5}$ and $PhaC2_{P-5}$ genes in Pseudomonas putida GPp104 revealed that $PhaC2_{P-5}$ incorporates both 3HV and MCL 3HAs into PHA, whereas $PhaC1_{P-5}$ favors only MCL 3HAs for polymerization. In order to obtain $PhaC2_{P-5}$ mutants with altered substrate specificity, site-specific mutagenesis for $PhaC2_{P-5}$ was conducted. Amino acid substitutions of $PhaC2_{P-5}$ at two positions (Ser326Thr and Gln482Lys) were very effective for synthesizing copolymers with a higher 3HV fraction. When recombinant P. putida GPp104 harboring double mutated $phaC2_{P-5}$ gene ($phaC2_{P-5}QKST$) was grown on nonanoic acid, 2.5-fold increase of copolymer content with 3.8-fold increase of 3HV fraction was observed. The $phaC2_{P-5}QKST$-containing Ralstonia eutropha PHB-4 supplemented with valeric acid also produced copolymers consisting of 3HV and 3-hydroxyheptanoate with a high 3HV fraction. These results suggest that recombinants containing $phaC2_{P-5}QKST$ could be useful for production of new PHA copolymers with improved material properties.

• BMB Reports
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.46-54
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• 2006

The coenzyme A-acylating 2-oxoacid:ferredoxin oxidoreductase and ferredoxin (an effective electron acceptor) were purified from the hyperthermophilic archaeon, Sulfolobus solfataricus P1 (DSM1616). The purified ferredoxin is a monomeric protein with an apparent molecular mass of approximately 11 kDa by SDS-PAGE and of $11,180{\pm}50$ Da by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Ferredoxin was identified to be a dicluster, [3Fe-4S][4Fe-4S], type ferredoxin by spectrophotometric and EPR studies, and appeared to be zinc-containing based on the shared homology of its N-terminal sequence with those of known zinc-containing ferredoxins. On the other hand, the purified 2-oxoacid: ferredoxin oxidoreductase was found to be a heterodimeric enzyme consisting of 69 kDa $\alpha$ and 34 kDa $\beta$ subunits by SDS-PAGE and MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. The purified enzyme showed a specific activity of 52.6 units/mg for the reduction of cytochrome c with 2-oxoglutarate as substrate at $55^{\circ}C$, pH 7.0. Maximum activity was observed at $70^{\circ}C$ and the optimum pH for enzymatic activity was 7.0 -8.0. The enzyme displays broad substrate specificity toward 2-oxoacids, such as pyruvate, 2-oxobutyrate, and 2-oxoglutarate. Among the 2-oxoacids tested (pyruvate, 2-oxobutyrate, and 2-oxoglutarate), 2-oxoglutarate was found to be the best substrate with $K_m$ and $k_{cat}$ values of $163\;{\mu}M$ and $452\;min^{-1}$, respectively. These results provide useful information for structural studies on these two proteins and for studies on the mechanism of electron transfer between the two.