Monitoring Insulin Aggregation via Capillary Electrophoresis

Early stages of insulin aggregation, which involve the transient formation of oligomeric aggregates, are an important aspect in the progression of Type II diabetes and in the quality control of pharmaceutical insulin production. This study is the first to utilize capillary electrophoresis (CE) with ultraviolet (UV) detection to monitor insulin oligomer formation at pH 8.0 and physiological ionic strength. The lag time to formation of the first detected species in the aggregation process was evaluated by UV-CE and thioflavin T (ThT) binding for salt concentrations from 100 mM to 250 mM. UV-CE had a significantly shorter (5–8 h) lag time than ThT binding (15–19 h). In addition, the lag time to detection of the first aggregated species via UV-CE was unaffected by salt concentration, while a trend toward an increased lag time with increased salt concentration was observed with ThT binding. This result indicates that solution ionic strength impacts early stages of aggregation and β-sheet aggregate formation differently. To observe whether CE may be applied for the analysis of biological samples containing low insulin concentrations, the limit of detection using UV and laser induced fluorescence (LIF) detection modes was determined. The limit of detection using LIF-CE, 48.4 pM, was lower than the physiological insulin concentration, verifying the utility of this technique for monitoring biological samples. LIF-CE was subsequently used to analyze the time course for fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC)-labeled insulin oligomer formation. This study is the first to report that the FITC label prevented incorporation of insulin into oligomers, cautioning against the use of this fluorescent label as a tag for following early stages of insulin aggregation

Design of proteasome inhibitors with oral efficacy in vivo against Plasmodium falciparum and selectivity over the human proteasome

The Plasmodium falciparum proteasome is a potential antimalarial drug target. We have identified a series of amino-amide boronates that are potent and specific inhibitors of the P. falciparum 20S proteasome (Pf20S) beta5 active site and that exhibit fast-acting antimalarial activity. They selectively inhibit the growth of P. falciparum compared with a human cell line and exhibit high potency against field isolates of P. falciparum and Plasmodium vivax They have a low propensity for development of resistance and possess liver stage and transmission-blocking activity. Exemplar compounds, MPI-5 and MPI-13, show potent activity against P. falciparum infections in a SCID mouse model with an oral dosing regimen that is well tolerated. We show that MPI-5 binds more strongly to Pf20S than to human constitutive 20S (Hs20Sc). Comparison of the cryo-electron microscopy (EM) structures of Pf20S and Hs20Sc in complex with MPI-5 and Pf20S in complex with the clinically used anti-cancer agent, bortezomib, reveal differences in binding modes that help to explain the selectivity. Together, this work provides insights into the 20S proteasome in P. falciparum, underpinning the design of potent and selective antimalarial proteasome inhibitors

Improving efficiency and fairness in P2P systems with effort-based incentives

Most P2P systems that have any kind of incentive mechanism reward peers’ contribution in terms of uploaded volume. Due to the disparity in bandwidth capacity between P2P users on the Internet, the common effect of such mechanisms is that the fastest peers reap the highest benefits. We take a different approach and study how to incentivize cooperation in P2P systems based on peers’ effort, i.e., contribution relative to capacity.We make the following contributions: 1) we propose that volume-based incentive schemes in P2P systems unnecessarily punish slow peers and decrease overall system performance; 2) we advocate that principles from an alternate economic vision, Participatory Economics (Parecon), can inspire systems which are fair and ensure maximization of the social welfare, while being efficient at the same time and 3) we present simulation results of applied principles from Parecon to two popular real life systems: a) the popular file sharing BitTorrent protocol, b) a generic credit based sharing ratio enforcement scheme. Our approach yields higher system performance and fairness for both, and offers interesting new insights into P2P incentive design

Identification of Potent and Selective Non-covalent Inhibitors of the Plasmodium falciparum Proteasome

We have identified short N,C-capped peptides that selectively inhibit the proteasome of the malaria-causing pathogen Plasmodium falciparum. These compounds are highly potent in culture with no toxicity in host cells. One cyclic biphenyl ether compound inhibited intraerythrocytic growth of P. falciparum with an IC₅₀ of 35 nM, and we show that even a pulse treatment with this cyclic peptide induced parasite death due to proteasome inhibition. These compounds represent promising new antimalarial agents that target the essential proteasomal machinery of the parasite without toxicity toward the host