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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Toward A Robust Computational Screening Strategy For Identifying Glycosaminoglycan Sequences That Display High Specificity For Target Proteins, Nehru Viji Sankaranarayanan, Umesh R. Desai Jan 2014

Toward A Robust Computational Screening Strategy For Identifying Glycosaminoglycan Sequences That Display High Specificity For Target Proteins, Nehru Viji Sankaranarayanan, Umesh R. Desai

Medicinal Chemistry Publications

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) interact with many proteins to regulate processes such as hemostasis, cell adhesion, growth and differentiation and viral infection. Yet, majority of these interactions remain poorly understood at a molecular level. A major reason for this state is the phenomenal structural diversity of GAGs, which has precluded analysis of specificity of their interactions. We had earlier presented a computational protocol for predicting “high-specificity” GAG sequences based on combinatorial virtual library screening (CVLS) technology. In this work, we expand the robustness of this technology through rigorous studies of parameters affecting GAG recognition of proteins, especially antithrombin and thrombin. The CVLS …


Intuitive, But Not Simple: Including Explicit Water Molecules In Protein-Protein Docking Simulations Improves Model Quality, Hardik I. Parikh, Glen E. Kellogg Jan 2014

Intuitive, But Not Simple: Including Explicit Water Molecules In Protein-Protein Docking Simulations Improves Model Quality, Hardik I. Parikh, Glen E. Kellogg

Medicinal Chemistry Publications

Characterizing the nature of interaction between proteins that have not been experimentally co-crystallized requires a computational docking approach that can successfully predict the spatial conformation adopted in the complex. In this work, the Hydropathic INTeractions (HINT) force field model was used for scoring docked models in a data set of 30 high-resolution crystallographically characterized “dry” protein-protein complexes, and was shown to reliably identify native-like models. However, most current protein-protein docking algorithms fail to explicitly account for water molecules involved in bridging interactions that mediate and stabilize the association of the protein partners, so we used HINT to illuminate the physical …


Crystal Structures Of Influenza A Virus Matrix Protein M1: Variations On A Theme, Martin K. Safo, Faik N. Musayev, Philip D. Mosier, Qibing Zhou, Hang Xie, Umesh R. Desai Jan 2014

Crystal Structures Of Influenza A Virus Matrix Protein M1: Variations On A Theme, Martin K. Safo, Faik N. Musayev, Philip D. Mosier, Qibing Zhou, Hang Xie, Umesh R. Desai

Medicinal Chemistry Publications

Matrix protein 1 (M1) of the influenza A virus plays multiple roles in virion assembly and infection. Interest in the pH dependence of M1's multiple functions led us to study the effect of subtle pH changes on M1 structure, resulting in the elucidation of a unique low-pH crystal structure of the N1-165-domain of A/WSN/33 (H1N1) M1 that has never been reported. Although the 2.2 Å crystal structure of M1 N-terminus shows a dimer with the two monomers interacting in a face-to-face fashion at low pH as observed earlier, a 44° rotation of the second monomer has led to a significantly …