• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.101-106
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• 2018

Corticotropin - releasing hormone receptor 1 (CRHR1) forms an integral part of the pathophysiology of disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder, stress, anxiety, addiction, and depression. Hence it is essential to look for new, potent and structure-specific inhibitors of CRHR1. We have analysed the protein-protein interaction complexes of the CRHR1 receptor with its native ligand CRF and full agonist Sauvagine. The structure of Sauvagine was predicted using homology modelling. We have identified that the residues TYR253, ASP254, GLU256, GLY265, ARG1014 and LY1060 are important in the formation of protein-protein complex formation. Future studies on these residues could throw light on the crucial structural features required for the formation of CRHR1-inhibitor complex and in studies that try to solve the structural complexities of CRHR1.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.629-634
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• 2009

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are part of multi-protein networks called 'receptosomes'. These GPCR interacting proteins (GIPs) in the receptosomes control the targeting, trafficking and signaling of GPCRs. PDZ domain proteins constitute the largest protein family among the GIPs, and the predominant function of the PDZ domain proteins is to assemble signaling pathway components into close proximity by recognition of the last four C-terminal amino acids of GPCRs. We present here a machine learning based approach for the identification of GPCR-binding PDZ domain proteins. In order to characterize the network of interactions between amino acid residues that contribute to the stability of the PDZ domain-ligand complex and to encode the complex into a feature vector, amino acid contact matrices and physicochemical distance matrix were constructed and adopted. This novel machine learning based method displayed high performance for the identification of PDZ domain-ligand interactions and allowed the identification of novel GPCR-PDZ domain protein interactions.

• Journal of Integrative Natural Science
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.125-130
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• 2017

Glucagon like pepide-2, one of the GLPs, is involved in various metabolic functions in the gastrointestinal tract. It plays a major role in the regulation of mucosal epithelium and the intestinal crypt cell proliferation. Because of their therapeutic importance towards the diseases in the gastrointestinal tract, it becomes necessary to study their interaction with its receptor, GLP-2R. In this study, we have developed protein-protein docking complexes of GLP-2 - GLP-2 receptor. Homology models of GLP-2 are developed, and a reliable model out of the predicted models was selected after model validation. The model was bound with the receptor, to study the important interactions of the complex. This study could be useful in developing novel and potent drugs for the diseases related with GLP-2.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.30.1-30.13
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• 2023

Ephs belong to the largest family of receptor tyrosine kinase and are highly conserved both sequentially and structurally. The structural organization of Eph is similar to other receptor tyrosine kinases; constituting the extracellular ligand binding domain, a fibronectin domain followed by intracellular juxtamembrane kinase, and SAM domain. Eph binds to respective ephrin ligand, through the ligand binding domain and forms a tetrameric complex to activate the kinase domain. Eph-ephrin regulates many downstream pathways that lead to physiological events such as cell migration, proliferation, and growth. Therefore, considering the importance of Eph-ephrin class of protein in tumorigenesis, 7,620 clinically reported missense mutations belonging to the class of variables of unknown significance were retrieved from cBioPortal and evaluated for pathogenicity. Thirty-two mutations predicted to be pathogenic using SIFT, Polyphen-2, PROVEAN, SNPs&GO, PMut, iSTABLE, and PremPS in-silico tools were found located either in critical functional regions or encompassing interactions at the binding interface of Eph-ephrin. However, seven were reported in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Considering the relevance of receptor tyrosine kinases and Eph in NSCLC, these seven mutations were assessed for change in the folding pattern using molecular dynamic simulation. Structural alterations, stability, flexibility, compactness, and solvent-exposed area was observed in EphA3 Trp790Cys, EphA7 Leu749Phe, EphB1 Gly685Cys, EphB4 Val748Ala, and Ephrin A2 Trp112Cys. Hence, it can be concluded that the evaluated mutations have potential to alter the folding pattern and thus can be further validated by in-vitro, structural and in-vivo studies for clinical management.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.121-124
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• 2015

Now, it has been being accepted that reverse signaling through CD137 ligand (CD137L) plays an important role in vivo during hematopoiesis and in immune regulation. However, due to technical difficulty in dissecting both directional signaling events simultaneously in vivo, most biological activities caused by CD137-CD137L interactions are considered as results from signaling events of the CD137 receptor. To make the story more complex, $CD137^{-/-}$ and $CD137L^{-/-}$ mice have increased or decreased immune responses in a context-dependent manner. In this Mini review, I will try to provide a plausible explanation for how CD137L signaling is controlled during immune responses.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.95-103
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• 2001

T cells play a central role in the initiation and regulation of the immune response to foreign antigens. Full activation of T cells requires the engagement of T cell receptor complex (TCR) and the binding of a second costimulatory receptor to its ligand expressed on antigen presenting cells (APC). Among the molecules known to provide costimulatory function, CD28 has been the most dominant and potent costimulatory molecule. However, the function of CD28 is becoming more complex due to the recent discovery of its structural homologue, CTLA-4 and ICOS. This review summarizes the biology and physiologic function of each of these receptors, and further focuses on the biochemical mechanism underlying the function of these receptors. Complete understanding of the CD28/CTLA-4/ICOS costimulatory pathway will provide the basis for developing new therapeutic approaches for immunological dieseases.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.3817-3825
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• 2015

Background: The human protein methyl-transferase DOT1L catalyzes the methylation of histone H3 on lysine 79 (H3K79) at homeobox genes and is also involved in a number of significant processes ranging from gene expression to DNA-damage response and cell cycle progression. Inhibition of DOT1L activity by shRNA or small-molecule inhibitors has been established to prevent proliferation of various MLL-rearranged leukemia cells in vitro, establishing DOT1L an attractive therapeutic target for mixed lineage leukemia (MLL). Most of the drugs currently in use for the MLL treatment are reported to have low efficacy, hence this study focused on various natural compounds which exhibit minimal toxic effects and high efficacy for the target receptor. Materials and Methods: Structures of human protein methyl-transferase DOT1L and natural compound databases were downloaded from various sources. Virtual screening, molecular docking, dynamics simulation and drug likeness studies were performed for those natural compounds to evaluate and analyze their anti-cancer activity. Results: The top five screened compounds possessing good binding affinity were identified as potential high affinity inhibitors against DOT1L's active site. The top ranking molecule amongst the screened ligands had a Glide g-score of -10.940 kcal/mol and Glide e-model score of -86.011 with 5 hydrogen bonds and 12 hydrophobic contacts. This ligand's behaviour also showed consistency during the simulation of protein-ligand complex for 20000 ps, which is indicative of its stability in the receptor pocket. Conclusions: The ligand obtained out of this screening study can be considered as a potential inhibitor for DOT1L and further can be treated as a lead for the drug designing pipeline.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.277-283
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• 2015

Plant genome analyses, including Arabidopsis thaliana showed a large gene family of plant receptor kinases with various extracellular ligand-binding domain. Now intensively studies to understand physiological and cellular functions for higher plant receptor kinases in diverse and complex biological processes including plant growth, development, ligands perception including steroid hormone and plant-microbe interactions. Brassinosteroids (BRs) as a one of well know steroid hormone are plant growth hormones that control biomass accumulation and also tolerance to many biotic and abiotic stress conditions and hence are of relevance to agriculture. BRI1 receptor kinase, which is localized in plasma membrane in the cell sense BRs and it bind to a receptor protein known as BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE 1 (BRI1). Recently, we reported that BRI1 and its co-receptor, BRI1-ASSOCIATED KINASE (BAK1) autophosphorylated on tyrosine residue (s) in vitro and in vivo and thus are dual-specificity kinases. Other plant receptor kinases are also phosphorylated on tyrosine residue (s). Post-translational modifications (PTMs) can be studied by altering the residue modified by directed mutagenesis to mimic the modified state or to prevent the modification. These approaches are useful to not only characterize the regulatory role of a given modification, but may also provide opportunities for plant improvement.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.94-102
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• 2002

An interesting recent application of intermolecular NOE experiment is the saturation transfer difference NMR(STD-NMR) method that is useful in screening compound libraries to identify bio-active ligands. This technique also identifies the group epitopes of the bound ligand in a reversibly forming protein-ligand complex. We present here a complete relaxation and conformational exchange matrix (CORCEMA) theory (Moseley et al., J. Magn. Reson. B, 108, 243-261 (1995)) applicable for the STD-NMR experiment. Using some ideal model systems we have analyzed the factors that influence the STD intensity changes in the ligand proton NMR spectrum when the resonances from some protons on the receptor protein are saturated. These factors will be discussed and some examples of its application in some model systems will be presented. This CORCEMA theory for STD-NMR and the associated algorithm are useful in a quantitative interpretation of the STD-NMR effects, and are likely to be useful in structure-based drug design efforts. They are also useful in a quantitative characterization of protein-protein (or protein-nucleic acid) contact surfaces from an intermolecular cross-saturation NMR experiment.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.221-233
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• 2004

Molecular docking falls into the general category of global optimization problems since its main purpose is to find the most stable complex consisting of a receptor and its ligand. Conformational space annealing (CSA), a powerful global optimization method, is incorporated with the Tinker molecular modeling package to perform molecular docking simulations of six receptor-ligand complexes (3PTB, 1ULB, 2CPP, 1STP, 3CPA and 1PPH) from the Protein Data Bank. In parallel, Monte Carlo with minimization (MCM) method is also incorporated into the Tinker package for comparison. The energy function, consisting of electrostatic interactions, van der Waals interactions and torsional energy terms, is calculated using the AMBER94 all-atom empirical force field. Rigid docking simulations for all six complexes and flexible docking simulations for three complexes (1STP, 3CPA and 1PPH) are carried out using the CSA and the MCM methods. The simulation results show that the docking procedures using the CSA method generally find the most stable complexes as well as the native -like complexes more efficiently and accurately than those using the MCM, demonstrating that CSA is a promising search method for molecular docking problems.