PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

G S Briggs

Publications and source records attributed to G S Briggs.

6 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Recombinant pro-regions from papain and papaya proteinase IV-are selective high affinity inhibitors of the mature papaya enzymes.

Proteolytic enzymes require the presence of their pro-regions for correct folding. Of the four proteolytic enzymes from Carica papaya, papain and papaya proteinase IV (PPIV) have 68% sequence identity. We find that their pro-regions are even more similar, exhibiting 73.6% identity. cDNAs encoding the pro-regions of these two proteinases have been expressed in Escherichia coli independently from their mature enzymes. The recombinant pro-regions of papain and PPIV have been shown to be high affinity inhibitors of all four of the mature native papaya cysteine proteinases. Their inhibition constants are in the range 10(-6) - 10(-9) M. PPIV was inhibited two to three orders of magnitude less effectively than papain, chymopapain and caricain. The pro-region of PPIV, however, inhibited its own mature enzyme more effectively than did the pro-region of papain. Alignment of the sequences of the four papaya enzymes shows that there is a highly variable section towards the C-terminal of the pro-region. This region may therefore confer selectivity to the pro-regions for the individual proteolytic enzymes.

Amino Acid Sequence↗
PubMed1995

Characterisation of the yenI/yenR locus from Yersinia enterocolitica mediating the synthesis of two N-acylhomoserine lactone signal molecules.

Yersinia enterocolitica produces compounds capable of transcriptionally activating the Photobacterium fischeri bioluminescence (lux) operon. Using high-performance liquid chromatography, high resolution tandem mass spectrometry in conjunction with chemical synthesis, two signal molecules were identified and shown to be N-hexanoyl-L-homoserine lactone (HHL) and N-(3-oxohexanoyl)-L-homoserine lactone (OHHL). A gene (yenI) was isolated from Y. enterocolitica and demonstrated to direct the synthesis of both HHL and OHHL. DNA sequence analysis revealed an open reading frame (ORF) of 642 bp encoding a protein (YenI) of 24.6 kDa with approximately 20% identity to the LuxI family of proteins. Northern blot analysis of yenI expression indicated yenI is transcribed as a single gene and 5' transcript mapping of yenI identified a transcriptional start site 89 bp upstream of the ORF. DNA sequence analysis of the region downstream of yenI located a second ORF, termed yenR, with significant homology to the LuxR family of transcriptional activators. An insertion mutation of yenI abolishes HHL and OHHL production, indicating its central role in N-acylhomoserine lactone synthesis in Y. enterocolitica. Transcriptional analysis using a chromosomal yenI::luxAB fusion has demonstrated that yenI is not subject to autoinduction but is expressed constitutively. Whilst production of the Yop proteins in the wild type and in yenI mutants is indistinguishable, two-dimensional SDS-PAGE analysis of total cell proteins indicated that a number of proteins lack the yenI mutant.

4-Butyrolactone↗
PubMed1994

Characterization of the CysB protein of Klebsiella aerogenes: direct evidence that N-acetylserine rather than O-acetylserine serves as the inducer of the cysteine regulon.

The cysB gene of Klebsiella aerogenes has been cloned, sequenced and shown to complement the cysteine auxotrophic phenotype of Escherichia coli cysB mutants. The K. aerogenes cysB gene is predicted to encode a protein of 324 amino acid residues that shares approx. 95% sequence similarity with the Salmonella typhimurium and E. coli CysB proteins. Gel-retardation assays demonstrate that the purified protein binds to DNA fragments containing either the K. aerogenes cysb promoter or the S. typhimurium cysJIH promoter. Acetylserine enhances CysB binding to the cysJIH promoter fragment while diminishing its binding to the cysB promoter fragment. Fluorescence-emission-spectroscopy measurements suggest strongly that N-acetylserine binds to CysB apoprotein but that O-acetylserine does not, and support the notion that N-acetylserine is the physiological inducer of cysteine biosynthesis.

Amino Acid Sequence↗