Prime movers : mechanochemistry of mitotic kinesins

Mitotic spindles are self-organizing protein machines that harness teams of multiple force generators to drive chromosome segregation. Kinesins are key members of these force-generating teams. Different kinesins walk directionally along dynamic microtubules, anchor, crosslink, align and sort microtubules into polarized bundles, and influence microtubule dynamics by interacting with microtubule tips. The mechanochemical mechanisms of these kinesins are specialized to enable each type to make a specific contribution to spindle self-organization and chromosome segregation

Clinicopathological and biological significance of mitotic centromere-associated kinesin overexpression in human gastric cancer

Mitotic centromere-associated kinesin (MCAK) is a microtubule (MT) depolymerase necessary for ensuring proper kinetochore MT attachment during spindle formation. To determine MCAK expression status and its clinicopathological significance, real-time reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction was used in 65 cases of gastric cancer. MCAK gene expression in cancer tissue was significantly higher than expression in non-malignant tissue (P<0.05). Elevated MCAK expression was significantly associated with lymphatic invasion (P=0.01) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.04). Furthermore, patients with high MCAK expression had a significantly poorer survival rate than those with low MCAK expression (P=0.008). Immunohistochemical study revealed that expression of MCAK was primarily observed in cancer cells. Additionally, a gastric cancer cell line (AZ521) that stably expressed MCAK was established and used to investigate the biological effects of the MCAK gene. In vitro results showed that cells transfected with MCAK had a high rate of proliferation (P<0.001) and increased migratory ability (P<0.001) compared to mock-transfected cells. This study demonstrated that elevated expression of MCAK may be associated with lymphatic invasion, lymph node metastasis, and poor prognosis. These characteristics may be due in part to the increased proliferative and migratory ability of cells expressing MCAK

Identifying Compound-Target Associations by Combining Bioactivity Profile Similarity Search and Public Databases Mining

Molecular target identification is of central importance to drug discovery. Here, we developed a computational approach, named bioactivity profile similarity search (BASS), for associating targets to small molecules by using the known target annotations of related compounds from public databases. To evaluate BASS, a bioactivity profile database was constructed using 4296 compounds that were commonly tested in the US National Cancer Institute 60 human tumor cell line anticancer drug screen (NCI-60). Each compound was used as a query to search against the entire bioactivity profile database, and reference compounds with similar bioactivity profiles above a threshold of 0.75 were considered as neighbor compounds of the query. Potential targets were subsequently linked to the identified neighbor compounds by using the known targets o

Efficient cross-coupling of dioxazaborocanes with alpha-phosphate enamides

International audienceA range of readily available -phosphate enamides were subjected to (hetero)aromatic dioxazaborocanes (DABO boronates), providing the desired -functionalized enamides in high yields via palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions. Notably, the reaction proceeds in the presence of a slight excess of boron derivatives and tolerates cyclic, nonaromatic and/or electron-rich enamides

Synthesis of exo‐Enamides from Protected Lactams Using a Modified Julia Olefination Reaction: Application to the Synthesis of Spiroaminal Fragments

International audienceA modified Julia olefination (Julia–Kocienski) reaction involving lactams has been developed, which gives the corresponding substituted exo-enamides in moderate to good yields. An application of this versatile transformation in the synthesis of spiroaminal fragments is also demonstrated

Aerobic Direct C-H Arylation of Nonbiased Olefins

An efficient ligand-promoted biomimetic aerobic oxidative dehydrogenative cross-coupling between arenes and nonbiased olefins is presented. Acridine as a ligand was found to significantly enhance the rate, the yield, and the scope of the reaction under ambient oxygen pressure, providing a variety of alkenylarenes via an environmentally friendly procedure.AuthorCount:2;</p

Insights into the interaction of discodermolide and docetaxel with tubulin. Mapping the binding sites of microtubule-stabilizing agents by using an integrated NMR and computational approach

41 p.-7 fig.-3 fig.-supl.The binding interactions of two antitumor agents that target the paclitaxel site, docetaxel and discodermolide, to unassembled α/β-tubulin heterodimers and microtubules have been studied using biochemical and NMR techniques. The use of discodermolide as a water-soluble paclitaxel biomimetic and extensive NMR experiments allowed the detection of binding of microtubule-stabilizing agents to unassembled tubulin α/β-heterodimers. The bioactive 3D structures of docetaxel and discodermolide bound to α/β-heterodimers were elucidated and compared to those bound to microtubules, where subtle changes in the conformations of docetaxel in its different bound states were evident. Moreover, the combination of experimental TR-NOE and STD NMR data with CORCEMA-ST calculations indicate that docetaxel and discodermolide target an additional binding site at the pore of the microtubules, which is different from the internal binding site at the lumen previously determined by electron crystallography. Binding to this pore site can then be considered as the first ligand-protein recognition event that takes place in advance of the drug internalization process and interaction with the lumen of the microtubulesThis work was supported in part by grant BIO2010-16351 and BQU2009-08536 from MICINN (to J.F.D. and J.J.B., respectively), BIPPED-CM from Comunidad de Madrid (J.F.D., J.J.B., and J.M.A.), and EPSRC (I.P.). We also thank CESGA and the CAI NMR of Universidad Complutense for providing access to their facilitiesPeer reviewe