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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Protection Of Retinal Cells From Ischemia By A Novel Gap Junction Inhibitor, Satyabrata Das, Dingo Lin, Snehalata Jena, Aibin Shi, Srinivas Battina, Duy H. Hua, Rachel A. Allbaugh, Dolores J. Takemoto Sep 2008

Protection Of Retinal Cells From Ischemia By A Novel Gap Junction Inhibitor, Satyabrata Das, Dingo Lin, Snehalata Jena, Aibin Shi, Srinivas Battina, Duy H. Hua, Rachel A. Allbaugh, Dolores J. Takemoto

Rachel A. Allbaugh

Retinal cells which become ischemic will pass apoptotic signal to adjacent cells, resulting in the spread of damage. This occurs through open gap junctions. A class of novel drugs, based on primaquine (PQ), was tested for binding to connexin 43 using simulated docking studies. A novel drug has been synthesized and tested for inhibition of gap junction activity using R28 neuro-retinal cells in culture. Four drugs were initially compared to mefloquine, a known gap junction inhibitor. The drug with optimal inhibitory activity, PQ1, was tested for inhibition and was found to inhibit dye transfer by 70% at 10 μM. Retinal …


Measuring The Dynamic Surface Accessibility Of Rna With The Small Paramagnetic Molecule Tempol, Vincenzo Venditti, Neri Niccolai, Samuel E. Butcher Jan 2008

Measuring The Dynamic Surface Accessibility Of Rna With The Small Paramagnetic Molecule Tempol, Vincenzo Venditti, Neri Niccolai, Samuel E. Butcher

Vincenzo Venditti

The surface accessibility of macromolecules plays a key role in modulating molecular recognition events. RNA is a complex and dynamic molecule involved in many aspects of gene expression. However, there are few experimental methods available to measure the accessible surface of RNA. Here, we investigate the accessible surface of RNA using NMR and the small paramagnetic molecule TEMPOL. We investigated two RNAs with known structures, one that is extremely stable and one that is dynamic. For helical regions, the TEMPOL probing data correlate well with the predicted RNA surface, and the method is able to distinguish subtle variations in atom …