Stability, denaturation and refolding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis MfpA, a DNA mimicking protein that confers antibiotic resistance

Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis 2020: Where We Stand

The control of tuberculosis (TB) is hampered by the emergence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains, defined as resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampin, the two bactericidal drugs essential for the treatment of the disease. Due to the worldwide estimate of almost half a million incident cases of MDR/rifampin-resistant TB, it is important to continuously update the knowledge on the mechanisms involved in the development of this phenomenon. Clinical, biological and microbiological reasons account for the generation of resistance, including: (i) nonadherence of patients to their therapy, and/or errors of physicians in therapy management, (ii) complexity and poor vascularization of granulomatous lesions, which obstruct drug distribution to some sites, resulting in resistance development, (iii) intrinsic drug resistance of tubercle bacilli, (iv) formation of non-replicating, drug-tolerant bacilli inside the granulomas, (v) development of mutations in Mtb genes, which are the most important molecular mechanisms of resistance. This review provides a comprehensive overview of these issues, and releases up-dated information on the therapeutic strategies recently endorsed and recommended by the World Health Organization to facilitate the clinical and microbiological management of drug-resistant TB at the global level, with attention also to the most recent diagnostic methods.

Thermally Induced Denaturing Energetics of Human Blood Plasma Albumin by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) as an Indicator for Breast Cancer Diagnosis in Female Patients

Cancerous invasion yields unusual metabolisms providing a significant amount of peptide albuminomes that modulate albumin stability via binding. The study aimed at the investigation of the thermal stability of human plasma albumin with breast cancer of various stages by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Blood plasma was drawn from 11 female breast cancer patients and 50 healthy volunteers of homogeneous demographics. Plasma samples and their albumin-enriched fractions were subjected to DSC scanning between 37 and 90°C at 5°C/min rate. For normal blood plasma, a characteristic signature of DSC tracing was observed. And, the deconvolution of DSC thermograms revealed the recognition of thermal transition of albumin. It was found that denaturing temperature of albumin increased with increasing breast cancer staging which implied the increase in albuminome/peptide abundance produced by cancerous invasion. The analysis of albumin denaturing energetics based on rational approximation of the simple Lumry-Eyring model demonstrated that thermal transition of free albumin and albuminome-bound form attained energetic levels expressed as apparent activation energy (E_app ± s.e.) of 132.68 ± 14.21 and 46.76 ± 8.42 Kcal/mol corresponded to the schemes dominated by irreversible alteration and by reversible unfolding, respectively. Thus, E_app value may indicate the degrees of cancerous invasion. It was proposed that E_app may be used as an indicator to diagnose and assess the prognosis of breast cancer.

Assessment of the Dissociation Energetics of Some Selected Ligand Drugs Bound on Human Serum Albumin by Differential Scanning Calorimetry

Drug-protein binding may play a role in the thermal energetics of protein denaturation and could lead to the determination of its equilibrium dissociation parameter. The aim of this study was to assess the energetics of a drug that was bound to human serum albumin (HSA) during thermal denaturation. Drugs that were bound at a single high-affinity primary binding site on HSA, including diazepam and ibuprofen, were employed. Commercial HSA was treated with charcoal to remove stabilizers and adjusted to 20% w/v in a pH 7.4 buffered solution. Serial concentrations of individual drugs up to 0.16 mmole/g-protein were added to the cleaned HSA solutions whereas diazepam was added to a commercial HSA solution. Samples were subjected to differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) set to run from 37 to 90°C at 3.0°C/min. Binding of the drug slightly increased the denaturing temperature of the cleaned HSA due to a shift in the equilibrium toward the native protein bound with the drug. Diazepam depressed the denaturing temperature of the commercial HSA by competing with the stabilizers already bound to the primary site of the HSA. This yielded not only the HSA-stabilizer but also the HSA-diazepam type complexes that exhibited a different denaturation process. A rational approximation of the Lumry-Eyring protein denaturation model was used to treat the DSC endotherms. The approximated scheme: [Formula: see text] was successfully fitted to the data. It was used to determine the dissociation parameters for diazepam and ibuprofen bound to the HSA. These results were comparable to those obtained from other methods.

The role of caprylate ligand ion on the stabilization of human serum albumin

Sodium caprylate was added to a pharmaceutical-grade human serum albumin (HSA) to stabilize the product. In this study we have aimed to establish how caprylate ligand protects HSA from thermal degradation. The fatty acid stabilizer was first removed from commercial HSA by charcoal treatment. Cleaned HSA was made to 10% w/v in pH 7.4 buffered solutions and doped with sodium caprylate in serial concentrations up to 0.16 mmol/g-protein. These solutions as well as a commercial HSA, human serum, and enriched-albumin fraction were subjected to differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) within the temperature range of 37-90°C at a 5.0°C/min scanning rate. The globular size of the cleaned HSA solutions was measured by dynamic light scattering. The denaturing temperatures for albumin with sodium caprylate and a commercial one were significantly higher than for albumin only. It was found that the protein globules of cleaned HSA were not as stable as that of the native one due to aggregation, and the caprylate ion may reduce the aggregation by enlarging the globules' electrical double layer. A rational approximation of the Lumry-Eyring protein denaturation model was used to treat DSC denaturing endotherms. The system turned from irreversible dominant Scheme: N (k3K)→ P to reversible dominant Scheme:N (k1)→ P with the increase in caprylate concentration from null to ~0.08 mmol/g-protein. It was postulated that the caprylate ligand may decrease the rate of reversible unfolding as it binds to the IIIA domain which is prone to reversible unfolding/refolding and causes further difficulty for irreversible denaturation which, in turn, HSA can be stabilized.

Introduction: twenty five years of the Gibbs Conference on Biothermodynamics

In 2011, the Gibbs Conference on Biothermodynamics will celebrate its 25th anniversary. Since the inaugural meeting in 1987, it has brought together laboratories that lived, breathed and argued about the molecular logic of macromolecular machines. The participants have a deep commitment to understanding the nature of physico-chemical forces that govern regulation of biological systems, and share a passion for applying linkage theory. The collective goal is to understand how ligand binding, subunit assembly and conformational change drive what we observe as physiological processes such as regulated transport, enzyme cascades, gene regulation, membrane permeability, viral infection, intracellular trafficking and folding of macromolecules. In this special issue, articles by former organizers of the Gibbs Conference showcase the current breadth and depth of the field of biothermodynamics, and how thoroughly it is integrated with the study of macromolecular structures, computational modeling and physiological studies of human health and disease.