Molecular mutations

Fechner, U., and Schneider, G. (2007). Flux (2) comparison of molecular mutation and crossover operators for ligand-based de novo design. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling 47, 656-667. 

Biotinidase activity can be measured in cultured amniotic fluid cells and in amniotic fluid. Therefore, prenatal diagnosis of biotinidase deficiency is possible. Prenatal diagnosis has been performed in two at-risk pregnancies in which amniocentesis was performed because of advanced maternal age. The fetuses were found to be unaffected, and this was confirmed after birth. In addition to enzyme determination in amniocytes, a fetus was correctly shown to be a heterozygote by molecular mutation analysis in an at-risk pregnancy. Because treatment is so effective in this disorder, some laboratories are now performing prenatal diagnosis. 

Mutant Allele Effect on protein Molecular mutation Neurological phenotype Physiological phenotypes Cellular phenotypes... 

The molecular mutational profile of SPCC is not well understood, though it is presumed to be similar to other tobacco-induced squamous cell carcinomas. One recent study did not find any evidence of KRAS mutations,... 

Currently, there are no diagnostic molecular mutation markers that are in use for the workup of routine SCC. 

The relative acidities in the gas phase can be detennined from ab initio or molecular orbital calculations while differences in the free energies of hydration of the acids and the cations are obtained from FEP sunulations in which FIA and A are mutated into FIB and B A respectively. 

How can we apply molecular dynamics simulations practically. This section gives a brief outline of a typical MD scenario. Imagine that you are interested in the response of a protein to changes in the amino add sequence, i.e., to point mutations. In this case, it is appropriate to divide the analysis into a static and a dynamic part. What we need first is a reference system, because it is advisable to base the interpretation of the calculated data on changes compared with other simulations. By taking this relative point of view, one hopes that possible errors introduced due to the assumptions and simplifications within the potential energy function may cancel out. All kinds of simulations, analyses, etc., should always be carried out for the reference and the model systems, applying the same simulation protocols. 

Arthur Lesk and Cyrus Chothia at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, compared the family of globin strucfures with the aim of answering two general questions How can amino acid sequences that are very different form proteins that are very similar in their three-dimensional structure What is the mechanism by which proteins adapt to mutations in the course of their evolution ... 

Sickle-cell anemia is the classic example of an inherited disease that is caused by a change in a protein s amino acid sequence. Linus Pauling proposed in 1949 that it was caused by a defect in the hemoglobin molecule he thus coined the term molecular disease. Seven years later Vernon Ingram showed that the disease was caused by a single mutation, a change in residue 6 of the P chain of hemoglobin from Glu to Val. 

Figure 3.13 The hemoglobin molecule is built up of four polypeptide chains two a chains and two (3 chains. Compare this with Figure 1.1 and note that for purposes of clarity parts of the a chains are not shown here. Each chain has a three-dimensional structure similar to that of myoglobin the globin fold. In sicklecell hemoglobin Glu 6 in the (3 chain is mutated to Val, thereby creating a hydrophobic patch on the surface of the molecule. The structure of hemoglobin was determined in 1968 to 2.8 A resolution in the laboratory of Max Perutz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK.

A protein with the innocuous name p53 is one of the most frequently cited biological molecules in the Science Citation Index. The "p" in p53 stands for protein and "53" indicates a molecular mass of 53 kDa. The p53 protein plays a fundamental role in human cell growth and mutations in this protein are frequently associated with the formation of tumors. It is estimated that of the 6.5 million people diagnosed with one or another form of cancer each year about half have p53 mutations in their tumor cells and that the vast majority of these mutations are single point mutations. 

One of the most important molecular functions of p53 is therefore to act as an activator of p21 transcription. The wild-type protein binds to specific DNA sequences, whereas tumor-derived p53 mutants are defective in sequence-specific DNA binding and consequently cannot activate the transcription of p5 3-con trolled genes. As we will see more than half of the over one thousand different mutations found in p53 involve amino acids which are directly or indirectly associated with DNA binding. 

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