Molecular Mimicry of Carbohydrates by Peptides

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Johnson ◽  
B. M. Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Molecular Mimicry ◽  
Vaccine Design ◽  
Structural Data ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Mimetic Peptides ◽  
The Subject

The use of carbohydrates as drugs and vaccines has several limitations. Molecular mimics of carbohydrates provide an alternative source of compounds to target pathways involving protein-carbohydrate interactions. In recent years, immunological studies have demonstrated the ability of certain peptides to act as molecular mimics of carbohydrates, in that they are able to induce an anti-carbohydrate immune response. Carbohydrate-mimetic peptides that bind to enzymes and lectins have also been discovered. The nature of this mimicry at the molecular level is currently the subject of investigation. Structural data regarding the origin of mimicry are reviewed, and their implications for drug and vaccine design are presented.

Reactions

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Atkins
Keyword(s):  
Chemical Reactions ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Chemical Processes ◽  
Chemical Formula ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Full Color ◽  
Chemistry Textbooks ◽  
Simple Chemical ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Solid Form

Illustrated with remarkable new full-color images--indeed, one or more on every page--and written by one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Reactions offers a compact, pain-free tour of the inner workings of chemistry. Reactions begins with the chemical formula almost everyone knows--the formula for water, H2O--a molecule with an "almost laughably simple chemical composition." But Atkins shows that water is also rather miraculous--it is the only substance whose solid form is less dense than its liquid (hence ice floats in water)--and incredibly central to many chemical reactions, as it is an excellent solvent, being able to dissolve gases and many solids. Moreover, Atkins tells us that water is actually chemically aggressive, and can react with and destroy the compounds dissolved in it, and he shows us what happens at the molecular level when water turns to ice--and when it melts. Moving beyond water, Atkins slowly builds up a toolkit of basic chemical processes, including precipitation (perhaps the simplest of all chemical reactions), combustion, reduction, corrosion, electrolysis, and catalysis. He then shows how these fundamental tools can be brought together in more complex processes such as photosynthesis, radical polymerization, vision, enzyme control, and synthesis. Peter Atkins is the world-renowned author of numerous best-selling chemistry textbooks for students. In this crystal-clear, attractively illustrated, and insightful volume, he provides a fantastic introductory tour--in just a few hundred colorful and lively pages - for anyone with a passing or serious interest in chemistry.

Vaccination today and tomorrow

1995 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 493-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Immune Responses ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Natural Host ◽  
Increasing Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Approaches

The vaccines against infectious diseases in use today are, with few exceptions, prepared from the causal agents themselves, either by inactivating them with a chemical such as formaldehyde or by attenuating them so that they grow and thus evoke an immune response in the natural host but cause no disease. These empirical approaches have produced many highly successful vaccines. Increasing knowledge at the molecular level of the agents and of the immune response to protein antigent is now providing us with the opportunity to design vaccines that will elicit protective responses without the need to use the agents themselves. The critical issue is to identify the immune responses that correlate with protection.

scholarly journals Immune response during hantavirus diseases: implications for immunotherapies and vaccine design

Immunology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farides Saavedra ◽  
Fabián E. Díaz ◽  
Angello Retamal‐Díaz ◽  
Camila Covián ◽  
Pablo A. González ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Vaccine Design

scholarly journals COVID-19 Cardiac Complication- Myocarditis

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Lana Maričić ◽  
Damir Mihić ◽  
Livija Sušić ◽  
Domagoj Loinjak
Keyword(s):  
Myocardial Injury ◽  
Molecular Mimicry ◽  
Viral Myocarditis ◽  
Specific Situation ◽  
Adaptive Mechanisms ◽  
Inflammatory Drugs ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Dose Corticosteroid ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Risk Infection

Based on the clinical experience, it has been observed that when it comes to the impact of SARS-CoV-2 virus on the cardiovascular system, it is significant. In patients with COVID-19 infection, the development of myocarditis occurs a few days after the onset of fever. The mechanism of myocardial injury alone, as well as most pathologies caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is the subject of research by many experts, but two basic ways can certainly be assumed: a direct toxic effect of SARS-CoV-2 on myocardial cells and another possible way of myocardial injury is to activate the innate immune response by releasing proinflammatory cytokines, as well as to activate the adaptive mechanisms of the autoimmune type by molecular mimicry. The approach to treatment is the same as for other viral myocarditis; it is non-specific, applied supportive treatment, such as anti-inflammatory drugs, low-dose corticosteroid therapy, and immunoglobulins. The aim of this review is to present the previous experiences of physicians around the world on the clinical presentation of myocarditis caused by COVID-19 infection, diagnostic and therapeutic approach in a specific situation of high-risk infection.

Wingless induces transdetermination in developing Drosophila imaginal discs

Development ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 121 (5) ◽  
pp. 1263-1272 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Maves ◽  
G. Schubiger
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Level ◽  
Ectopic Expression ◽  
Imaginal Discs ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Cell Determination ◽  
Disc Cells ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Insight Into

Drosophila imaginal discs, the precursors of the adult fly appendages, have been the subject of intensive developmental studies, particularly on cell determination. Cultured disc fragments are recognized not only for the ability to maintain their determined state through extra cell divisions but also for the ability to transdetermine, or switch to the determined state of a different disc. An understanding of transdetermination at a molecular level will provide further insight into the requirements for maintaining cell determination. We find that ectopic expression of the Drosophila gene wingless induces transdetermination of foreleg imaginal disc cells to wing cells. This transdetermination occurs in foreleg discs of developing larvae without disc fragmentation. The in situ-transdetermining cells localize to the dorsal region of the foreleg disc. This wingless-induced transdetermination event is remarkably similar to the leg-to-wing switch that occurs after leg disc culture. Thus we have identified a new approach to a molecular dissection of transdetermination.

scholarly journals The immune response and immune evasion characteristics in SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2: Vaccine design strategies

2020 ◽  
pp. 107051
Author(s):  
Soheila Molaei ◽  
Masoomeh Dadkhah ◽  
Vahid Asghariazar ◽  
Chiman Karami ◽  
Elham Safarzadeh
Keyword(s):  
Immune Response ◽  
Immune Evasion ◽  
Vaccine Design ◽  
Design Strategies

scholarly journals Television Docudrama as Alternative Records of History

2005 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 479-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foluke Ogunleye
Keyword(s):  
Human Beings ◽  
Tertiary Institution ◽  
Alternative Source ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The People ◽  
Cave Paintings ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject

From time immemorial human beings have sought to document their activities in realistic forms in order to pass across information about their lives to posterity. Even before the advent of cinematography, human beings had attempted to show life, not as static, but as dynamic. Cave paintings done by early men have shown an attempt to demonstrate movement through drawings of animals with many legs, designed to simulate motion. Also, attempts at showing moving images have included the shadow plays of North Africa and India, puppetry in many parts of the world, the pot art of India, etc. These activities presented the culture of the people and showed how icons are developed, what they stand for in the people's lives, and how people made meaning out of their lives and activities. With the development of the arts of cinematography and television, these also became vehicles to document happenings and events in the lives of the people.In this study, I discuss the television docudrama as an alternative means of documenting history. There are many reasons necessitating an alternative source of documenting history, but two examples from Nigeria will suffice to justify this position. The powers-that-be in Nigeria have decreed that it is no longer necessary to study history in primary and secondary schools, and the subject has been removed from the curriculum. Consequently, if a Nigerian citizen does not go to a tertiary institution to study history, the past of her/his people will forever remain a mystery to her/him. Currently, there is a very lively debate in Nigeria about the origins of the Yoruba people. Traditional rulers, who are supposed to be the custodians of history, are at loggerheads with each other and with eggheads in history departments. The traditional rulers are bringing out diverse facts and evidence that differ from previously written histories.

Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bogard
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Organic Form ◽  
The Subject

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language—it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his words, a “pure effect or event.” With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a “machinics of desire” produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but “anorganic” composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies.

scholarly journals Production and crystallization of a panel of structure-based mutants of the human myelin peripheral membrane protein P2

2012 ◽  
Vol 68 (11) ◽  
pp. 1359-1362 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mari Lehtimäki ◽  
Saara Laulumaa ◽  
Salla Ruskamo ◽  
Petri Kursula
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Membrane Protein ◽  
Peripheral Nerve ◽  
Lipid Bilayers ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Structural Data ◽  
Functional Assays ◽  
Peripheral Membrane Protein ◽  
Function Relationship ◽  
Relationship Of

The myelin sheath is a multilayered membrane that surrounds and insulates axons in the nervous system. One of the proteins specific to the peripheral nerve myelin is P2, a protein that is able to stack lipid bilayers. With the goal of obtaining detailed information on the structure–function relationship of P2, 14 structure-based mutated variants of human P2 were generated and produced. The mutants were designed to potentially affect the binding of lipid bilayers by P2. All mutated variants were also crystallized and preliminary crystallographic data are presented. The structural data from the mutants will be combined with diverse functional assays in order to elucidate the fine details of P2 function at the molecular level.

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