Daunomycin (DM) is a clinically used antitumor anthracycline antibiotic, which is transported primarily by human serum albumin (HSA) in the blood. Binding characteristics are therefore of interest for both the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of DM. A new optical biosensor technique based on the resonant mirrorwas used to characterize interaction ofDMwith HSA at different temperatures and the affinity constants were obtained. The HSA-DM interaction is exothermic with having favorable enthalpy and entropy followed by the integrated van't Hoff equation analysis. Fluorescence studies showed that DM has an ability to quench the intrinsic fluorescence of HSA through a static quenching procedure according to the Stern–Volmer equation and DM displays a pH-dependent binding affinity to HSA. Molecular modeling calculations showed that the DM binds HSA to a non-classical drug binding site and further analysis of the binding site of DM within the HSA molecule suggested that hydrophobic contacts, hydrogen bond formation and electrostatic interactions account for the binding of DM.

A three-dimensional structural model of nattokinase (NK) from Bacillus natto was constructed by homology modeling. High-resolution Xray structures of Subtilisin BPN' (SB), Subtilisin Carlsberg (SC), Subtilisin E (SE) and Subtilisin Savinase (SS), four proteins with sequential, structural and functional homology were used as templates. Initial models of NK were built by MODELLER and analyzed by the PROCHECK programs. The best quality model was chosen for further refinement by constrained molecular dynamics simulations. The overall quality of the refined model was evaluated. The refined model NKC1 was analyzed by different protein analysis programs including PROCHECK for the evaluation of Ramachandran plot quality, PROSA for testing interaction energies and WHATIF for the calculation of packing quality. This structure was found to be satisfactory and also stable at room temperature as demonstrated by a 300 ps long unconstrained molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. Further docking analysis promoted the coming of a new nucleophilic catalytic mechanism for NK, which is induced by attacking of hydroxyl rich in catalytic environment and locating of S221.

The objective of the present study was to investigate the feasibility of a subunit vaccine and a live bacteria vaccine to protect chickens against infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) infection. The gene for VP2 of a new wild-type very virulent IBDV (vvIBDV) strain was cloned into an Escherichia coli expression system. Following expression, the recombinant VP2 and the induced expression bacteria were used to vaccinate chickens against virulent IBDV (vIBDV). Three weeks after the vaccination, chickens were inoculated with IBDV strain BC 6/85 by intranasal route or eyedrop route, prior to challenge anti-IBDV serum antibody was detected by AGP. All chickens vaccinated with recombinant VP2 could be detected anti-IBDV antibody. The subunit vaccine of recombinant VP2 conferred protection for 90-100% chickens, live bacteria vaccine of recombinant VP2 conferred protection for 85.7% chickens. The results indicate that E. coli BL21/pET28a-VP2 could be used to develop recombinant VP2 vaccine against infectious bursal disease in chickens

Reactive oxygen species play an important role in the mediation of cell killing. But the mechanistic links between reactive oxygen species (ROS) and cell death remains unclear. There was a speculation that ROS, especially hydroxyl radicals can induce necrosis but not apoptosis in cells treated with copper-1,10-phenanthroline, IICu(OP)2. In this paper, liver carcinoma cell line (Bel-7402) was treated with IICu(OP)2 and its effect was examined by several means. Cells were found to undergo changes characteristic of apoptosis. Hoechst staining showed apoptotic body appeared in the cells induced by IICu(OP)2. When DNA extracted from the cells treated with IICu(OP)2 was analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis it generated 'ladder' pattern of discontinuousDNAfragments. Sub-G1 peakwas detected in treated cells. Furthermore, two different flowcytometric methods were used, each allowing us to relate the apoptotic cells to the position the cell-cycle position. Apoptosis induced by IICu(OP)2 was limited to G1-phase cells. Using cyclin analysis, the expression of cyclin E in G1 was blocked. Thus, it was concluded that IICu(OP)2 can induceG1-phase specific apoptosis in Bel-7402.