The mechanism of de novo synthesis of fructooligosaccharides in leaf disks of certain Asteraceae. III.

1974 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. R. Chandorkar ◽  
F. W. Collins

14C-tracer experiments revealed that both endogenous and exogenous substrate was incorporated in the fructosans synthesized in leaf disks during incubation on phosphate-buffered sugar media. At least some of the endogenous substrate was derived from a source which was insoluble in 80% ethanol at the start of the incubation period. Endogenous and exogenous substrates were distributed in the fructosans in a pattern which was qualitatively similar regardless of the type of sugar supplied exogenously. A complex relationship was exhibited between the specific activity of various fructosan oligomers, expressed on a gram basis, and their chain length. However, expressed on a molar basis, the specific activity of the fructosyl tail portion of each homolog appeared to be linearly related to the number of hexosyl residues that it contained. Such a relationship suggests that enzymes similar to the Jerusalem artichoke tuber transfructosylases are present in leaf disk tissue after 72 h incubation and indeed may function in the de novo synthesis of fructosans in vivo.

1973 ◽  
Vol 51 (10) ◽  
pp. 1931-1937 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Collins ◽  
K. R. Chandorkar

De novo synthesis of fructosans in leaf disks of certain Asteraceae incubated on phosphate-buffered 5% sucrose medium was accompanied by increases in fresh and dry weight and a considerable enhancement in the rate of respiration. Radiorespirometry using 14C-sucrose showed that the respiratory pool was kept at the expense of both exogenous and endogenous substrates. During the initial 24 h of incubation, about 80% or more of the total respiratory carbon was derived from the exogenously supplied sugar. This proportion gradually decreased during the last 48 h to a final value of about 50%. Of the total sugar taken up by the leaf disks, less than 20% was utilized in respiration while more than four-fifths was available for further metabolism including fructosan formation. The respiratory quotient values remained relatively unchanged from 0.8 to 0.9 throughout most of the incubation period and suggested that endogenous substrate other than carbohydrate was drawn into respiratory metabolism.


1971 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 1347-1356 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. J. Holub ◽  
A. Kuksis

The specific activities of individual molecular species of rat liver diacylglycerylphosphorocholine (PC), diacylglycerylphosphoroethanolamine (PE), and diacylglycerophosphorylinositol (MPI) were determined and compared following intravenous injection of glycerol-14C. PC, PE, and MPI contained 41, 51, and 83%, respectively, tetraenoic species, and 40,17, and 9% combined mono-, di-, and trienoic species. The rest of the phosphatide mass of PC, PE, and MPI was contributed by 18, 32, and 8% penta- and hexaenoic species, respectively. The proportions of chemical classes of the glycerophosphatides differed by 1.1- to 18-fold while the fatty acid associations within the unsaturation classes common to these phosphatides varied 2.2- to 17-fold. After 5 min exposure to radioactive glycerol, the mono-, di-, and trienoic species of the PC, PE, and MPI possessed 13–18, 15–50, and 6–42 times, respectively, the specific activity of the tetraenes of the corresponding phosphatide classes. While the pentaenoic and hexaenoic species of PC and MPI had specific activities three to five times those of the respective tetraenes, the higher polyenes of PE were considerably more radioactive and approached the specific activity of the dienoic species of this phosphatide. With progressing time up to 60 min, the tetraenoic species of PC, PE, and MPI showed increases in relative specific activity of 50, 64, and 109%, respectively, in the three phosphatides. These results are consistent with an effective de novo synthesis of the oligoenoic species and a transacylation of the tetraenoic species of all liver glycerophosphatides tested. The proportional contribution of de novo synthesis in comparison to acyl transfer is apparently greater to the formation of PC and PE than to that of MPI.


1972 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. R. Chandorkar ◽  
F. W. Collins

Incubation of leaf disks of certain genera of Asteraceae on phosphate-buffered, 5% sugar solutions resulted in the de novo synthesis of a homologous series of inulin-type fructosans. Fructo-oligosaccharides of degree of polymerization 3 to 21 or 22 were present in dandelion, chicory, lettuce, hawkweed, and sow thistle leaf disks after 72 h, but not in dahlia or sunflower. Synthesis occurred with media containing either fructose, glucose, or sucrose, but not with mannose or galactose. Fructosan formation began after about 36 h and continued with the sequential synthesis of homologs of increasing chain length. After 72 h, the relationship between the amount of polymer synthesized and the chain length appeared to be logarithmically biphasic, consisting of two series of exponentially decreasing values. Incubation for 120 h however, resulted in a distribution more closely resembling that found naturally in fructosan storing tissues. 14C-tracer studies showed that both the endogenous and exogenous carbohydrate sources contribute to fructosan synthesis. Fructo-oligosaccharide formation was blocked by cycloheximide, puromycin, and actinomycin D but not chloramphenicol, indicating that cytoplasmic protein and nucleic acid synthesis was required. Analysis of fructosan formation during incubation suggests a close correlation between transfructosylation mechanisms observed in vitro and the de novo synthesis of fructosans in vivo.


1992 ◽  
Vol 263 (2) ◽  
pp. R348-R352 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Aebi ◽  
B. H. Lauterburg

There is a growing interest in the therapeutic use of sulfhydryls. To assess the effect of glutathione (GSH) and cysteine on the cellular thiol status, thiols were administered intravenously to rats in doses ranging from 1.67 to 8.35 mmol/kg with and without pretreatment with 4 mmol/kg buthionine-[S,R]-sulfoximine (BSO), an inhibitor of GSH synthesis. One hour after administration of 1.67 mmol/kg GSH, the concentration of GSH rose from 5.2 +/- 1.0 to 8.4 +/- 0.9 mumol/g and from 2.5 +/- 0.5 to 3.7 +/- 0.7 mumol/g in liver and kidneys, respectively. After 8.35 mmol/kg, hepatic GSH did not increase further, but renal GSH rose to 6.7 +/- 1.8 mumol/g. Infusion of cysteine increased hepatic GSH to the same extent as intravenous GSH, but renal GSH did not increase after 1.67 mmol/kg and even significantly decreased to 0.6 +/- 0.2 mumol/g after 8.35 mmol/kg. In the presence of BSO, GSH resulted in a significant increase in renal but not hepatic GSH, suggesting that the kidneys take up intact GSH and indicating that the increment in hepatic GSH was due to de novo synthesis. The present data show that hepatic GSH can be markedly increased in vivo by increasing the supply of cysteine. Measurements of hepatic cysteine indicate that up to a concentration of approximately 0.5 mumol/g cysteine is a key determinant of hepatic GSH, such that the physiological steady-state concentration of GSH in the liver appears to be mainly determined by the availability of cysteine. At higher concentrations GSH does not increase further, possibly due to feedback inhibition of GSH synthesis or increased efflux.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


1979 ◽  
Vol 34 (12) ◽  
pp. 1237-1242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfram Köller ◽  
Helmut Kindl

Abstract Malate synthase is synthesized de novo in the very early phase of germination. Its molecular and immunological properties do not differ from those of malate synthase from fully developed cotyledons. Radioactive leucine was administered to dry seeds of cucumber, and its incorporation into proteins of cotyledons was examined after 2 days of germination. The specific radioactivity of malate synthase, purified by immunoprecipitation and electrophoresis on polyacrylamide gel, was only 1/20 the average value of the total albumin fraction. The minimal incorporation documented by the comparatively low specific activity of isolated malate synthase is discussed in relation to the large pool of malate synthase already present in dry seeds.


Blood ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 34-35
Author(s):  
Julia Skokowa ◽  
Mohammad Elgamacy ◽  
Patrick Müller

Protein therapeutics are clinically developed and used as minorly engineered forms of their natural templates. This direct adoption of natural proteins in therapeutic contexts very frequently faces major challenges, including instability, poor solubility, and aggregation, which may result in undesired clinical outcomes. In contrast to classical protein engineering techniques, de novo protein design enables the introduction of radical sequence and structure manipulations, which can be used to address these challenges. In this work, we test the utility of two different design strategies to design novel granulopoietic proteins, using structural information from human granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (hG-CSF) as a template. The two strategies are: (1) An epitope rescaffolding where we migrate a tertiary structural epitope to simpler, idealised, proteins scaffolds (Fig. 1A-C), and (2) a topological refactoring strategy, where we change the protein fold by rearranging connections across the secondary structures and optimised the designed sequence of the new fold (Fig. 1A,D,E). Testing only eight designs, we obtained novel granulopoietic proteins that bind to the G-CSF receptor, have nanomolar activity in cell-based assays, and were highly thermostable and protease-resistant. NMR structure determination showed three designs to match their designed coordinates within less than 2.5 Å. While the designs possessed starkly different sequence and structure from the native G-CSF, they showed very specific activity in differentiating primary human haematopoietic stem cells into fully mature granulocytes. Morever, one design shows significant and specific activity in vivo in zebrafish and mice. These results are prospectively directing us to investigate the role of dimerisation geometry of G-GCSF receptor on activation magnitude and downstream signalling pathways. More broadly, the results also motivate our ongoing work on to design other heamatopoietic agents. In conclusion, our findings highlight the utility of computational protein design as a highly effective and guided means for discovering nover receptor modulators, and to obtain new mechanistic information about the target molecule. Figure 1. Two different strategies to generate superfolding G-CSF designs. (A) X-ray structure of G-CSF (orange) bound to its cognate receptor (red) through its binding epitope (blue). According to the epitope rescaffolding strategy, (B) the critical binding epitope residues were disembodied and used as a geometric search query against the entire Protein Data Bank (PDB) to retrieve structurally compatible scaffolds. The top six compatible scaffolds structures are shown in cartoon representation. (C) The top two templates chosen for sequence design, were a de novo designed coiled-coil and a four-helix bundle with unknown function. The binding epitopes were grafted, and the scaffolds were optimised to rigidly host the guest epitope. (D-E) According to the topological refactoring strategy (D) the topology of the native G-CSF was rewired from around the fixed binding epitope, and then was further mutated to idealise the core residues (blue volume (E)) and residues distal from the binding epitope (orange crust (E)). Both strategies aimed at simplifying the topology, reducing the size, and rigidifying the bound epitope conformation through alternate means. Figure 1 Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Metabolites ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 473
Author(s):  
Yue Hei Leung ◽  
Sonja Christiane Bäßler ◽  
Christian Koch ◽  
Theresa Scheu ◽  
Ulrich Meyer ◽  
...  

Sphingolipids are bioactive lipids that can modulate insulin sensitivity, cellular differentiation, and apoptosis in a tissue-specific manner. However, their comparative profiles in bovine retroperitoneal (RPAT) and subcutaneous adipose tissue (SCAT) are currently unknown. We aimed to characterize the sphingolipid profiles using a targeted lipidomics approach and to assess whether potentially related sphingolipid pathways are different between SCAT and RPAT. Holstein bulls (n = 6) were slaughtered, and SCAT and RPAT samples were collected for sphingolipid profiling. A total of 70 sphingolipid species were detected and quantified by UPLC-MS/MS in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, including ceramide (Cer), dihydroceramide (DHCer), sphingomyelin (SM), dihydrosphingomyelin (DHSM), ceramide-1-phosphate (C1P), sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), galactosylceramide (GalCer), glucosylceramide (GluCer), lactosylceramide (LacCer), sphinganine (DHSph), and sphingosine (Sph). Our results showed that sphingolipids of the de novo synthesis pathway, such as DHSph, DHCer, and Cer, were more concentrated in RPAT than in SCAT. Sphingolipids of the salvage pathway and the sphingomyelinase pathway, such as Sph, S1P, C1P, glycosphingolipid, and SM, were more concentrated in SCAT. Our results indicate that RPAT had a greater extent of ceramide accumulation, thereby increasing the concentration of further sphingolipid intermediates in the de novo synthesis pathway. This distinctive sphingolipid distribution pattern in RPAT and SCAT can potentially explain the tissue-specific activity in insulin sensitivity, proinflammation, and oxidative stress in RPAT and SCAT.


1968 ◽  
Vol 46 (11) ◽  
pp. 1339-1343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcel Bastin

Slices of tubers of Jerusalem artichoke were cultured at 28 °C in complete darkness, and the production of phenolic acids, phenol oxidase, and peroxidase was studied in relation to subsequent cutting of the tissue. Wounding increased the production of both phenolic acids and enzymes. Purification of the peroxidase by DEAE-cellulose chromatography showed that not all of its components were synthesized in the injured slices. Cycloheximide and chloramphenicol were added to cultures to investigate a requirement for the de novo synthesis of protein in relation to production of the compounds. Cycloheximide at a concentration of 5 μg/ml strongly inhibited the production of both phenolic acids and the enzymes, but chloramphenicol decreased the production of only phenol oxidase.


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