[Celiac colitis and ulcerative colitis].
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M C Peña.
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The dermatological activity of cosmetic formulations containing alpha-hydroxyacids depends on their different chemical forms, and it is therefore useful to determine these species in the finished products. In the present report a new procedure for studying the protonation equilibria of glycolic and lactic acids by stopped-flow Fourier-transform infra-red (FTIR) spectrometry is described. The procedure was validated for use in the speciation of glycolic and lactic acids in cosmetic formulations, with preferential attention given to glycolic acid, which is the most widely used. Species of these alpha-hydroxyacids can be approximately determined at different pHs and the total content of each alpha-hydroxyacid can be accurately determined (according to the Student t-test at 5% significance level). The recovery of the total content of glycolic acid from commercial cosmetic formulations was 101+/-4%. The RSD of the determinations of the total content and those of the species was of the order of 2-7%.
Aluminum dust is a toxic and hazardous byproduct of Al remelting. The present research was performed to characterize and evaluate its behavior in water. The materials obtained by hydrolysis were also characterized, and the gases generated during the process were qualitatively analyzed. The effects of hydrolysis reaction time and temperature on the dust were also explored. The hydrolysis of Al dust is an exothermic reaction that gave rise to a solid composed of aluminum oxide, silicon oxide, and spinel (MgAl2O4). Most of the CH4, NH3, and SH2 gases generated were emitted immediately upon the start of the reaction, though their production continued for a long time. This slow reaction, which was moderately accelerated by temperature, led to the formation of a material less reactive than the untreated dust. On the other hand, heat treatment of the dust gave rise to an inert material composed of spinel, alumina, and magnesium and aluminum silicates.
New 2-piperazinylbenzothiazole and 2-piperazinylbenzoxazole derivatives were prepared and tested as 5-HT3 receptor antagonists. Some of the new compounds antagonized the effect of 5-HT at the longitudinal muscle myenteric plexus (LMMP) preparation of the guinea pig ileum, and two benzothiazole derivatives, compounds 2e and 2f, were more potent than ondansetron in this regard. However, these two compounds were much weaker than the typical 5-HT3 receptor antagonist as displacers of [3H]BRL-43694 binding to rat cerebral cortex homogenates or as antagonists of the bradycardia response to 5-HT in the anaesthetized rat. Like the prokinetic agent cisapride, some of the new compounds enhanced gastric emptying in rats. Compound 2f not only markedly enhanced gastric emptying but was also a potent agonist at the isolated rat oesophageal tunica muscularis mucosae, a preparation sensitive to 5-HT4 receptor stimulation, and enhanced the twitch response in the LMMP preparation. The latter effect was blocked by a high concentration of tropisetron or by previous desensitization with 5-methoxytryptamine. Compound 2f appears to show a promising pharmacological profile as a potential gastrokinetic agent.
The biosynthesis of branched-chain amino acids (aa) involves three shared pathways through which pyruvate or alpha-ketobutyrate are converted into alpha-keto acids, precursors of valine, leucine or isoleucine. In eukaryotes, few of these common enzymes have been purified to homogeneity, and the whole complement of biosynthetic genes has not been cloned from a single species. In yeasts, most of these genes (ILV genes) have been cloned and sequenced, with the exception of that coding for dihydroxyacid dehydratase (DAD, EC 4.2.1.9), the third enzyme in the common pathways. We have isolated Saccharomyces cerevisiae genomic sequences by hybridization to an oligodeoxyribonucleotide (oligo) probe designed from a highly conserved domain among bacterial DAD-encoding genes. The cloned sequences have been located to S. cerevisiae chromosome X, mapped within 0.4 centiMorgans (cM) of the ilv3 locus, and found to complement the ilv3 mutations of various yeast strains. Nucleotide (nt) and aa sequence analyses of the longest open reading frame (ORF) located within the cloned sequences identified them as the ILV3 gene, which codes for the yeast DAD. With our cloning of ILV3, yeast becomes the only eukaryotic system from which all ILV genes have been cloned, thus allowing direct molecular analyses of their regulation.
With the purpose of establishing whether, as a general rule, regions of a protein chain that are helical in the native structure maintain, at least partially, the same helical structure when isolated in solution, we have prepared the 1-23 fragment of human hemoglobin alpha-chain, and studied its conformational properties in aqueous solution by CD and 1H-NMR. From the analysis of CD and NMR spectral changes with temperature, salt and addition of trifluoroethanol (TFE) it can be concluded that the 1-23 peptide forms a measurable population (18% at 22 degrees C (pH 5.6) TFE/H2O, 30:70 (v/v)) of an alpha-helix structure that spans the same residues that are helical in the native protein (namely, 6 to 17). These results, taken together with similar ones obtained previously in the 1-19, 21-42 and 50-61 RNAase fragments, support the idea that no helices other than the native ones are actually formed in solution by protein fragments. This implies that the final helical structure of a protein is present from the very beginning of the folding process, and also that such elements of secondary structure can act as primary nucleation centers.