• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.300-306
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• 2022

The mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling cascade is essential for a wide range of cellular responses in plants, including defense responses, responses to abiotic stress, hormone signaling, and developmental processes. Recent investigations have shown that the stress, ethylene, and MAPK signaling pathways negatively affect the formation of nitrogen-fixing nodules by directly modulating the symbiotic signaling components. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the defense responses mediated by MAPK signaling in the organogenesis of nitrogen-fixing nodules remain unclear. In the present study, I demonstrate that the Medicago truncatula mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 5 (MtMKK5)-Medicago truncatula mitogen-activated protein kinase 3/6 (MtMPK3/6) signaling module, expressed specifically in the symbiotic nodules, promotes defense signaling, but not ethylene signaling pathways, thereby inhibiting nodule development in M. truncatula. U0126 treatment resulted in increased cell division in the nodule meristem zone due to the inhibition of MAPK signaling. The phosphorylated TEY motif in the activation domain of MtMPK3/6 was the target domain associated with specific interactions with MtMKK5. I have confirmed the physical interactions between M. truncatula nodule inception (MtNIN) and MtMPK3/6. In the presence of high expression levels of the defense-related genes FRK1 and WRKY29, MtMKK5a overexpression significantly enhanced the defense responses of Arabidopsis against Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 (Pst DC3000). Overall, my data show that the negative regulation of symbiotic nitrogen-fixing nodule organogenesis by defense signaling pathways is mediated by the MtMKK5-MtMPK3/6 module.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.560-568
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• 2014

The contribution of electrostatic interactions to protein folding reaction was studied by using mutant ubiquitin with lysine to alanine mutation at residue position 29. Based on the three dimensional structure of ubiquitin, lysine 29 is located close to negatively charged glutamate 16 and aspartate 21 and considered to stabilize the native state of ubiquitin by electrostatic interactions between these residues. The equilibrium unfolding experiment showed that the native stability was decreased by about ~20% upon mutation. This observation indicates lysine 29 indeed forms electrostatic interactions with nearby residues. Folding kinetics measurements using stopped-flow device and quantitative analysis of kinetics data indicate that ubiquitin folds from unfolded state to native state via intermediate state as observed previously. This intermediate state was observed to form immediately after the initiation of folding reaction. The folding intermediate was shown to be destabilized considerably upon lysine to alanine mutation. These observations indicate that electrostatic interactions can form early stage of protein folding and hence lead the folding reaction.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartB
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• v.13B no.7 s.110
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• pp.679-688
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• 2006

Protein-protein interaction data obtained from high-throughput experiments includes high false positives. In this paper, we introduce a new protein-protein interaction reliability verification system. The proposed system integrates various biological features related with protein-protein interactions, and then selects the most relevant and informative features among them using a feature selection method. To assess the reliability of each protein-protein interaction data, the system construct a classifier that can distinguish true interacting protein pairs from noisy protein-protein interaction data based on the selected biological evidences using a classification technique. Since the performance of feature selection methods and classification techniques depends heavily upon characteristics of data, we performed rigorous comparative analysis of various feature selection methods and classification techniques to obtain optimal performance of our system. Experimental results show that the combination of feature selection method and classification algorithms provide very powerful tools in distinguishing true interacting protein pairs from noisy protein-protein interaction dataset. Also, we investigated the effects on performances of feature selection methods and classification techniques in the proposed protein interaction verification system.

• CELLMED
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.6.1-6.12
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• 2014

Anthrax is the deadly disease for human being caused by Bacillus anthracis. Instantaneous research work on the mode of infection of the organism revealed that different proteases are involved in different steps of pathogenesis. Present study reports the in silico characterization and the detection of pathogenic proteases involved in anthrax infection through protein-protein interaction. A total of 13 acid, 9 neutral, and 1 alkaline protease of Bacillus anthracis were selected for analysing the physicochemical parameter, the protein superfamily and family search, multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic tree construction, protein-protein interactions and motif finding. Among the 13 acid proteases, 10 were found as extracellular enzymes that interact with immune inhibitor A (InhA) and help the organism to cross the blood brain barrier during the process of infection. Multiple sequence alignment of above acid proteases revealed the position 368, 489, and 498-contained 100% conserved amino acids which could be used to deactivate the protease. Among the groups analyzed, only acid protease were found to interact with InhA, which indicated that metalloproteases of acid protease group have the capability to develop pathogenesis during B. anthracis infection. Deactivation of conserved amino acid position of germination protease can stop the sporulation and germination of B anthracis cell. The detailed interaction study of neutral and alkaline proteases could also be helpful to design the interaction network for the better understanding of anthrax disease.

• BMB Reports
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.381-385
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• 2005

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is an emerging infectious disease associated with a novel coronavirus (CoV) that was identified and molecularly characterized in 2003. Previous studies on various coronaviruses indicate that protein-protein interactions amongst various coronavirus proteins are critical for viral assembly and morphogenesis. It is necessary to elucidate the molecular mechanism of SARS-CoV replication and rationalize the anti-SARS therapeutic intervention. In this study, we employed an in vitro GST pull-down assay to investigate the interaction between the membrane (M) and the nucleocapsid (N) proteins. Our results show that the interaction between the M and N proteins does take place in vitro. Moreover, we provide an evidence that 12 amino acids domain (194-205) in the M protein is responsible for binding to N protein. Our work will help shed light on the molecular mechanism of the virus assembly and provide valuable information pertaining to rationalization of future anti-viral strategies.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.627-634
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• 2012

This study was carried out to investigate the physical and thermal properties of ${\kappa}$-carrageenan (${\kappa}$-car) gel added whey protein isolate (WPI) as a cryoprotectant. The concentration of ${\kappa}$-carrageenan was fixed at 0.2 wt%. The mean ice crystal size of the WPI/${\kappa}$-car was decreased according to increasing whey protein isolate concentration. The temperature of gel-sol (Tg-s) and sol-gel (Ts-g) transition of WPI/${\kappa}$-car maxtrix was represented in the order of 3.0, 0.2, 5.0 and 1.0 wt%. In addition, the transition temperature of gel-sol of WPI in sucrose solution were showed in order of 1.0, 5.0, 0.2 and 3.0 wt% depending on whey protein isolate concentration. The shape of ice crystal was divided largely into two types, round and rectangular form. 1.0 wt% WPI/${\kappa}$-car matrix at pH 7 and 9 showed minute and rectangular formation of ice crystals and whey protein isolate in sucrose solution at a concentration of 1.0 wt% WPI/${\kappa}$-car matrix at pH 3 and 5 showed relatively large size and round ice crystals. The ice recrystallization characteristics and cryprotective effect of ${\kappa}$-carrageenan changed through the addition of different concentrations of whey protein isolate. It seems that the conformational changes induced interactions between whey protein isolate and ${\kappa}$-carrageenan affected ice recrystallization.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.2005-2011
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• 2012

Nopp140 is a highly phosphorylated protein that resides in the nucleolus of mammalian cell and is involved in the biogenesis of the nucleolus. It interacts with a variety of proteins related to the synthesis and assembly of the ribosome. It also can bind to a ubiquitous protein kinase CK2 that mediates cell growth and prevents apoptosis. We found that Nopp140 is an intrinsically unfolded protein (IUP) lacking stable secondary structures over its entire sequence of 709 residues. We discovered that mitoxantrone, an anticancer agent, was able to enhance the interaction between Nopp140 and CK2 and maintain suppressed activity of CK2. Surface plasma resonance studies on different domains of Nopp140 show that the C-terminal region of Nopp140 is responsible for binding with mitoxantrone. Our results present an interesting example where a small chemical compound binds to an intrinsically unfolded protein (IUP) and enhances protein-protein interactions.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.483-485
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the Korean Biophysical Society Conference
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• 1996.07a
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• pp.21-21
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• 1996

The hyperthermostable protein, rubredoxin from Pyrococcus furiosus is 53-residue protein with a three-stranded anti-parallel $\beta$-sheet and several loops. To investigate the effect of changes of electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions on the structure and dynamic property of P. furiosus rubredoxin, molecular dynamics simulations in water were performed on three mesophilic rubredoxins, P, furiosus rubresoxin, and 5 mutants of P. furiosus rubredoxin. (omitted)

• Proceedings of the Korean Biophysical Society Conference
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• 2002.06b
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• pp.30-30
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• 2002

The native forms of common globular proteins are in their most stable state but the native forms of plasma serpins (serine protease inhibitors) show high-energy state interactions. The high-energy state strain of a ${\alpha}$$_1$-antitrypsin, a prototype serpin, is distributed throughout the whole molecule, but the strain that regulates the function directly appears to be localized in the region where the reactive site loop is inserted during complex formation with a target protease.(omitted)