Giovanni Francesco Abela’s legacy to the Jesuit College

It would have been much more appropriate if this paper had been in last Week but at the time the idea of it had not yet been conceived. 1982 marked the fourth centenary of the birth of Giovanni Francesco Abela who was born in Valletta in the year 1582, 17 years after that most notable and noble event in Maltese history, the of Malta the Turks. though the latter event was not the commemoration was, to my of the birth of this distinguished Maltese forebear. in his honour, as had been done of his death.peer-reviewe

Oriented Covalent Immobilization of Antibodies for Measurement of Intermolecular Binding Forces between Zipper-Like Contact Surfaces of Split Inteins

In order to measure the intermolecular binding forces between two halves (or partners) of naturally split protein splicing elements called inteins, a novel thiol-hydrazide linker was designed and used to orient immobilized antibodies specific for each partner. Activation of the surfaces was achieved in one step, allowing direct intermolecular force measurement of the binding of the two partners of the split intein (called protein <i>trans</i>-splicing). Through this binding process, a whole functional intein is formed resulting in subsequent splicing. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to directly measure the split intein partner binding at 1 μm/s between native (wild-type) and mixed pairs of C- and N-terminal partners of naturally occurring split inteins from three cyanobacteria. Native and mixed pairs exhibit similar binding forces within the error of the measurement technique (∼52 pN). Bioinformatic sequence analysis and computational structural analysis discovered a zipper-like contact between the two partners with electrostatic and nonpolar attraction between multiple aligned ion pairs and hydrophobic residues. Also, we tested the Jarzynski’s equality and demonstrated, as expected, that nonequilibrium dissipative measurements obtained here gave larger energies of interaction as compared with those for equilibrium. Hence, AFM coupled with our immobilization strategy and computational studies provides a useful analytical tool for the direct measurement of intermolecular association of split inteins and could be extended to any interacting protein pair

MOESM3 of How does cellulosome composition influence deconstruction of lignocellulosic substrates in Clostridium (Ruminiclostridium) thermocellum DSM 1313?

Additional file 3: Table S1. Functional classes distribution of C. thermocellum DSM 1313 cellulosomal subunits. Cellulosomal subunits detected in the C. themocellum DSM 1313 proteome were sorted into five functional classes: endoglucanases, exoglucanases, hemicellulases, scaffoldins and others