• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.381-388
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• 2008

An X-linked skeletal disorder, SEDT (spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia tarda) is a genetic disease characterized by a disproportionately short trunk and short stature caused by mutations in the SEDL gene. This gene is evolutionarily conserved from yeast to human. The yeast SEDL protein ortholog, Trs20p, has been isolated as a member of a large multi-protein complex called the transport protein particle (TRAPP), which is involved in endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-to-Golgi transport. The interaction between SEDL and partner proteins is important in order to understand the molecular mechanism of SEDL functions. We isolated several SEDL-binding proteins derived from rat cells by an immobilized GST-fusion method. Furthermore, the SEDL-homologue proteins were identified using motif based methods. Common motifs between SEDL-binding proteins and SEDL-homologue proteins were classified into seven types and 78 common motifs were revealed. Sequence similarities were contracted to seven types using phylogenetic trees. In general, types I-III and VI were classified as having the function of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, glycogen phosphorylase, isocitrate dehydrogenase, and enolase, respectively, and type IV was found to be functionally related to the GST protein. Types V and VII were found to contribute to TRAPP vesicle trafficking.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.1311-1314
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• 2008

Bacillus halodurans O-methyltransferase (BhOMT) is an S-adenosylmethionine dependent methyltransferase. In our previous study, three dimensional structure of the BhOMT has been determined by comparative homology modeling and automated docking study showed that two hydroxyl groups at 3'- and 4'-position in Bring and structural rigidity of C-ring resulting from the double bond characters between C2 and C3 of flavonoid, were key factors for interaction with BhOMT. In the present study, BhOMT was cloned and expressed. Binding assay was performed on purified BhOMT using fluorescence experiments and binding affinity of luteolin, quercetin, fisetin, and myricetin were measured in the range of $10^7$. Fluorescence quenching experiments indicated that divalent cation plays a critical role on the metal-mediated electrostatic interactions between flavonoid and substrate binding site of BhOMT. Fluorescence study confirmed successfully the data obtained from the docking study and these results imply that hydroxyl group at 7-position of luteolin, quercetin, fisetin, and myricetin forms a stable hydrogen bonding with K211 and carboxyl oxygen of C-ring forms a stable hydrogen bonding with R170. Hydroxyl group at 3'-and 4'-position in the B-ring also has strong $Ca^{2+}$ mediated electrostatic interactions with BhOMT.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.151-156
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• 2002

Fucoidan is a kind of polysaccharides in brown seaweeds. For the past years have been extensively studied due to their numerous biological activities : anticancer, anticoagulant, antithrombotic, anti-inflammatory and antiviral. In this study, we h ave extracted fucoidan from the Korean brown seaweeds and examined it's anticancer activities for employed SV40 DNA replication assay, RPA-ssDNA binding assay of replication protein A(RPA: known as human single-stranded DNA-binding protein essential for DNA rep-lication) and MCF7 cell growth inhibition assay. In addition to, we found that chemically sulfated fucoidan'santicancer activity is more higher than natural and desulfated fucoidan. It seem that fucoidan's sulfate group affect on DNA replication, cause of decrease RPA's DNA binding activity. These results suggests that sulfated fucoidan from Korean brown seaweeds have anticancer activity.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.1773-1777
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• 2002

Reactive oxygen species(ROS) have been investigated to have pivotal roles on amyloidogenecity of $\beta-amyloidpeptide(A\beta)$, the major component of senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease(AD) brain. Addition of radical scavengers is one of the on-going strategies for therapeutic treatment for AD patients. Hsp104 protein including two ATP binding sites from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as a molecular chaperone, was known to function as a protector of ROS generation when exposed to oxidative stress in our previous study. This observation has led us to investigate Hsp104 protein as a molecular mediator of $A{\beta}$ aggregation in this study. We have developed a new way of expression for Hsp104 protein using GST-fusion tag. As we expected, formation of $A{\beta}$ aggregate was protected by wild type Hsp104 protein, but not by the two ATP-binding site mutant, based on Thioflavin-T fluorescence. Interestingly, Hsp104 protein was observed to keep $A{\beta}$ from forming aggregates independent of ATP binding. On the other hand, disaggregation of $A{\beta}$ aggregates by wild type Hsp104 was totally dependent on the presence of ATP. On the other hand, mutant Hsp104 with two ATP binding sites altered exhibited no inhibition. Another effective antioxidant, hydrazine analogs of curcumin were also effective in $A{\beta}$ fibrilization as protectors against oxidative stress. Based on these observations we conclude that Hsp104 and curcumin derivatives, as protectors of oxidative stress, inhibit $A{\beta}$ aggregation in virto and can be candidates for therapeutic approaches in cure of some neurodegenerative disease.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.549-555
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• 2006

Acetohydroxyacid synthase (AHAS, EC 2.2.1.6 also referred to as acetolactate synthase) catalyzes the first common step in the metabolic pathway leading to biosynthesis of the branched-chain amino acids in plants and microorganisms. Due to its presence in plants, AHAS is a target for the herbicides (sulfonylurea and imidazolinone), which act as potent inhibitors of the enzyme. Recently, we have shown [J. Kim, D.G. Baek, Y.T. Kim, J.D. Choi, M.Y. Yoon, Biochem. J. (2004) 384, 59-68] that the residues in the “mobile loop” 567-582 on the C-termini are involved in the binding/stabilization of the active dimer and ThDP (thiamin diphosphate) binding. In this study, we have demonstrated the role of the W573 in the mobile loop of the C-termini of tobacco AHAS. The substitution of this W573 residue caused significant perturbations in the activation process and in the binding site of ThDP. Position W573 plays a structurally important role in the binding of FAD, maintaining the enzyme active site in the required geometry for catalysis to occur. In here we propose that the tryptophan at position 573 is important for the catalytic process.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.1573-1576
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• 2010

Bacillus subtilis PerR is a metal-dependent peroxide-sensing transcription factor which uses metal-catalyzed histidine oxidation for peroxide-sensing. PerR contains two metal binding sites, one for structural $Zn^{2+}$ and the other for the regulatory/peroxide-sensing metal. Here we investigated the effect of mutations at both the structural and regulatory metal binding sites on the oxidation of either H37 or H91, two of the peroxide-sensing ligands. All four serine substitution mutants at the structural $Zn^{2+}$ site (C96S, C99S, C136S and C139S) exhibited no detectable oxidation at histidine residues. Two of the alanine substitution mutants at regulatory metal site (H37A and D85A) exhibited selective oxidation preferentially at the H91-containing tryptic peptide, whereas no oxidation was detected in the other mutants (H91A, H93A and D104A). Our results suggest that the cysteine residues coordinating structural $Zn^{2+}$ are essential for peroxide sensing by PerR, and that the C-terminal regulatory metal binding site composed of H91, H93 and D104 can bind $Fe^{2+}$, providing a possible explanation for the peroxide sensing mechanisms by PerR.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.905-911
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• 2011

The possible minimum structures of $C_{60}(CH_2)_nOH$ (n=0~2) and $C_{60}(OH)_2$have been optimized using density functional theory (DFT) with the 6-311G (d,f) basis set. The harmonic vibrational frequencies and IR intensities are also determined to confirm that all the optimized geometries are true minima. Also zero-point vibrational energies (ZPVE) have been considered to predict the binding energies. The predicted binding energy of $C_{60}CH_2OH$ is about 10 kcal/mol more stable than the binding energy of $C_{60}OH$.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.758-762
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• 2007

A new alkyldithiocarbonate (xanthate), as sodium salts, C2H5OCS2Na, was synthesized by the reaction between CS2 with ethyl alcohol in the presence of NaOH. The new xanthate was characterized by 1H NMR, IR and elemental analysis. Then, the new synthesized compound was examined for functional study of cresolase activity of Mushroom Tyrosinase (MT) from a commercial source of Agricus bisporus in 10 mM phosphate buffer pH 6.8, at three temperatures of 10, 20 and 33℃ using UV spectrophotemetry. 4-[(4-methylphenyl)- azo]-phenol (MePAPh) was used as a synthetic substrate for the enzyme for cresolase reaction. The results show that ethyl xanthate can activate or inhibit the cresolase activity of mushroom tyrosinase depending to the concentration of ethyl xanthate. It was concluded that the enzyme has two distinct sites for ethyl xanthate. The first one is a high-affinity activation site and the other is a low-affinity inhibition site. Activation of the enzyme in the low concentration of ethyl xanthate arises from increasing the affinity of binding for the substrate as well as increasing the enzyme catalytic constant. The affinity of ligand binding in the activation site is decreased by increasing of the temperature, which is the opposite result for the inhibition site. Hence, the nature of the interaction of ethyl xanthate is different in two distinct sites. The binding process for cresolase inhibition is only entropy driven, meanwhile the binding process for cresolase activation is not only entropy driven but also enthalpy driven means that hydrophobic interaction is more important in the inhibition site.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1839-1844
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• 2012

We have investigated binding between wild-type and mutant Heat Shock Factor (HSF) DNA binding domains (DBDs) with 17-bp HSE containing a central 5'-NGAAN-3' element by equilibrium analytical ultracentrifugation using multi-wavelength technique. Our results indicate that R102 plays critical role in HSE recognition and the interactions are characterized by substantial negative changes of enthalpy (${\Delta}H^0_{\theta}=-9.90{\pm}1.13kcal\;mol^{-1}$) and entropy (${\Delta}S^0_{\theta}=-12.46{\pm}3.77cal\;mol^{-1}K^{-1}$) with free energy change, ${\Delta}G^0_{\theta}$ of $-6.15{\pm}0.03kcal\;mol^{-1}$. N105 plays minor role in the HSE interactions with ${\Delta}H^0_{\theta}$ of $-2.54{\pm}1.65kcal\;mol^{-1}$, ${\Delta}S^0_{\theta}$ of $19.28{\pm}5.50cal\;mol^{-1}K^{-1}$ and ${\Delta}G^0_{\theta}$ of $-8.35{\pm}0.05kcal\;mol^{-1}$, which are similar to those observed for wild-type DBD:HSE interactions (${\Delta}H^0_{\theta}=-3.31{\pm}1.86kcal\;mol^{-1}$, ${\Delta}S^0_{\theta}=17.38{\pm}6.20cal\;mol^{-1}K^{-1}$ and ${\Delta}G^0_{\theta}=-8.55{\pm}0.06kcal\;mol^{-1}$) indicating higher entropy contribution for both wild-type and N105A DBD bindings to the HSE.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.27 no.11
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• pp.1801-1808
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• 2006

The interaction between whey carrier protein $\beta$-lactoglobulin type A and B (BLG-A and -B) and 2,2'-bipyridin n-hexyl dithiocarbamato Pd(II) nitrate (BPHDC-Pd(II)), a new heavy metal complex designed for anticancer property, was investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy combined with chemometry and circular dichroism (CD) techniques. A strong fluorescence quenching reaction of BPHDC-Pd(II) to BLG-A and -B was observed. Hence, BPHDC-Pd(II) complex can be bound to both BLG-A and -B, and quench the fluorescence spectra of the proteins. The quenching constant was determined using the modified Stern-Volmer equation. The binding parameters were evaluated by fluorescence quenching method. The results of binding study provided evidences presence of two and three sets of binding sites on the BLG-B and -A, respectively, for BPHDC-Pd(II) complex. Using fluorescence spectroscopy and chemometry, the ability of BLG-A and -B to form an intermediate upon interaction with BPHDC-Pd(II) complex was assessed. CD studies displayed that under influence of different concentrations of BPHDC-Pd(II) complex, the regular secondary structure of BLG-B had no significant changes, whereas for BLG-A a transition from $\alpha$-helix to $\beta$-structure was appeared. The results for both of BLG-A and -B displayed that BPHDC-Pd(II) complex can induce a conformational transition from the native form to an intermediate state with a slightly opened conformation, which is detectable with chemometry analyses.