Protease, artificial

Ghaim, J.B., Greiner, D.P., Meares, C.F., and Gennis, R.B. (1995) Proximity mapping the surface of a membrane protein using an artificial protease demonstration that the quinone-binding domain of subunit I is near the N-terminal region of subunit II of cytochrome bd. Biochemistry 34(36), 11311-11315. 

Rana, T.M., and Meares, C.F. (1991b) Transfer of oxygen from an artificial protease to peptide carbon during proteolysis. PNAS 88, 10578. 

The understanding of the mechanistic principles underlying the catalytic chemistry of metalloproteases has been applied in the design and synthesis of a number of biomimetic metal complexes that ftinction as artificial proteases. These complexes include mononuclear wateractivating complexes, and multinuclear complexes that combine carboxyl terminal recognition, peptide carbonyl polarization, and water nucleophile activation fimctions. ... 

If an artificial enzyme can solve an important biological problem that cannot be treated with natural enzymes, it may be regarded as an artificial dream enzyme. For example, artificial proteases removing protein aggregates allegedly are responsible for Alzheimer s, Parkinson s, or mad cow disease, are among the artificial dream enzymes. 

High reaction rates at ambient temperatures and near neutral pH values are necessary to design artificial proteases applicable to food industries, catalytic turnover in the peptide hydrolysis, and hydrolysis of a broad range of protein substrates at selected sites. In addition, easy separation of the catalysts from protein hydrolysates is required. Construction of catalytic centers directly on immobile supports is, therefore, advantageous to designing artificial proteases applicable to protein industries. 

After BO or BP was incubated with BSA at various pH values until the protein was almost completely degraded, the polymer was recovered and used again to cleave BSA. The activity of the recovered polymer was almost identical with that of the fresh polymer. The active sites of the artificial proteases, therefore, were not appreciably damaged during incubation with the proteins under the conditions adopted for collection of kinetic data. 

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