Hydrophobic groups, covalent attachment

Reversed Phase This technique is based on hydrophobic regions on the surface of proteins and the hydrophobic groups covalently attached to the surface of the matrix. Organic solvents are required for elution. It is suitable for peptides and proteins up to 2.4x10" Da. 

More recently, several groups have investigated electrostatic effects on the fluorescence quenching of hydrophobic chromophores covalently attached to various polyanions. The photophysics of the chromophores incorporated in the polyeletrolytes at small mole fractions is relatively simple, because no interaction is expected to occur between the incorporated chromophores. For this reason, most of the studies have focused on amphiphilic polyeletrolytes loaded with a low amount of hydrophobic chromophores. 

The invariance of the groups covalently attached to the heme has already been discussed. Two constant leucines (32 and 68) are in tight van der Waals contact with the heme. Several other such contact positions, although not invariant, are strictly limited to leucine, isoleucine, or valine. In no case is an internal hydrophobic group close to the heme ever replaced by ansrthing other than another hydrophobic residue. The requirement for a hydrophobic environment around the heme is absolute. 

By covalently attaching reactive groups to a polyelectrolyte main chain the uncertainty as to the location of the associated reactive groups can be eliminated. The location at which the reactive groups experience the macromolecular environment critically controls the reaction rate. If a reactive group is covalently bonded to a macromolecular surface, its reactivity would be markedly influenced by interfacial effects at the boundary between the polymer skeleton and the water phase. Those effects may vary with such factors as local electrostatic potential, local polarity, local hydrophobicity, and local viscosity. The values of these local parameters should be different from those in the bulk phase. 

Besides the synthetic inhibitors, a variety of natural compounds is known to inhibit the CP. One of these natural inhibitors, lactacystin, was discovered by its ability to induce neurite outgrowth in a murine neuroblastoma cell line. Incubation of cells in the presence of radioactive lactacystin leads to the labelling of the yS5 subunit (Fenteany et al. 1995) and to irreversible inhibition of the CP. As shown by X-ray analysis, the inhibitor is covalently attached to subunit fS5 by an ester bond with the N-terminal ThrlO (Groll et al. 1997) (see Figure 10.7A). The subunit selectivity of lactacystin can be attributed to its dimethyl group, which mimics a valine or a leucine side chain and closely interacts with Met45 in the hydrophobic SI pocket of subunit j85. 

Another synthetic polymer that has shown promise in recent clinical trials for the micellar encapsulation of anticancer dmgs is a block copolymer of PEG and poly (aspartic acid) [PEG-Z -P(Asp)]. Doxombicin can be covalently attached to PEG-fi-P(Asp) through the free carboxylic acid groups on aspartic acid, and the block copolymer then forms micelles in solution with the hydrophobic aspartic acid and dmg block forming the core (Yokoyama et al. 1991 Kataoka et al. 1993). As typically occurs, the hydrated PEG chains significantly increased blood circulation... 

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