Biomedical subjects

Jirí Janecek

Publications and source records attributed to Jirí Janecek.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Interfacial properties of cyclic hydrocarbons: a Monte Carlo study.

The Monte Carlo technique is used to study the vapor-liquid interface of cyclopentane, cyclohexane, and benzene. The OPLS and TraPPE potential fields are compared in the temperature range from 298.15 to 348.15 K (273.15-298.15 K for C5H10). A new method for the treatment of the long-range interactions in inhomogeneous simulations is used. When this new method is employed, the obtained values of saturated liquid density and of enthalpy of vaporization are equal to those obtained using the bulk isothermal-isobaric Monte Carlo technique. The values of surface tension become independent of the cutoff distance and they are significantly larger than those when only simple spherical truncation of intermolecular interactions is used.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2006

Long range corrections in inhomogeneous simulations.

An improved method for the treatment of the long range corrections in molecular simulations of inhomogeneous systems with planar interfaces is presented. To evaluate the quality of this approach, Monte Carlo simulations of the Lennard-Jones fluid are performed in the temperature range T* is an element of <0.7, 1.25>. The attention is focused especially on the values of the surface tension, which represents a property significantly sensitive to the truncation of the intermolecular interactions. When the presented approach is employed, the values of coexisting densities and surface tensions obtained with the cutoff distance R(c) = 2.5sigma are within experimental errors identical with those obtained for cutoff distance R(c) = 5.5sigma.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2005

Characterization of a eukaryotic type serine/threonine protein kinase and protein phosphatase of Streptococcus pneumoniae and identification of kinase substrates.

Searching the genome sequence of Streptococcus pneumoniae revealed the presence of a single Ser/Thr protein kinase gene stkP linked to protein phosphatase phpP. Biochemical studies performed with recombinant StkP suggest that this protein is a functional eukaryotic-type Ser/Thr protein kinase. In vitro kinase assays and Western blots of S. pneumoniae subcellular fractions revealed that StkP is a membrane protein. PhpP is a soluble protein with manganese-dependent phosphatase activity in vitro against a synthetic substrate RRA(pT)VA. Mutations in the invariant aspartate residues implicated in the metal binding completely abolished PhpP activity. Autophosphorylated form of StkP was shown to be a substrate for PhpP. These results suggest that StkP and PhpP could operate as a functional pair in vivo. Analysis of phosphoproteome maps of both wild-type and stkP null mutant strains labeled in vivo and subsequent phosphoprotein identification by peptide mass fingerprinting revealed two possible substrates for StkP. The evidence is presented that StkP can phosphorylate in vitro phosphoglucosamine mutase GlmM which catalyzes the first step in the biosynthetic pathway leading to the formation of UDP-N-acetylglucosamine, an essential common precursor to cell envelope components.

Electrophoresis, Gel, Two-Dimensional↗