Structural Stability of Human Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase ρ Catalytic Domain: Effect of Point Mutations

Protein tyrosine phosphatase ρ (PTPρ) belongs to the classical receptor type IIB family of protein tyrosine phosphatase, the most frequently mutated tyrosine phosphatase in human cancer. There are evidences to suggest that PTPρ may act as a tumor suppressor gene and dysregulation of Tyr phosphorylation can be observed in diverse diseases, such as diabetes, immune deficiencies and cancer. PTPρ variants in the catalytic domain have been identified in cancer tissues. These natural variants are nonsynonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms, variations of a single nucleotide occurring in the coding region and leading to amino acid substitutions. In this study we investigated the effect of amino acid substitution on the structural stability and on the activity of the membrane-proximal catalytic domain of PTPρ. We expressed and purified as soluble recombinant proteins some of the mutants of the membrane-proximal catalytic domain of PTPρ identified in colorectal cancer and in the single nucleotide polymorphisms database. The mutants show a decreased thermal and thermodynamic stability and decreased activation energy relative to phosphatase activity, when compared to wild- type. All the variants show three-state equilibrium unfolding transitions similar to that of the wild- type, with the accumulation of a folding intermediate populated at ∼4.0 M urea

Effect of the Demographic Variables and Psychometric Properties of the Personal Well-Being Index for School Children in India

The Personal Well-being Index-school children (PWI-SC; Cummins and Lau 2005) measures well-being of adolescents. The study aimed at validating psychometric properties for the English and the Hindi translated version of PWI-SC in Indian context. Data from 1,301 students, aged 13–18 years (mean age = 15.40 years, SD = 1.33) was collected. The English and Hindi version confirmed one-factor solution of the PWI-SC. The convergent validity was supported through positive correlations with Flourishing Scale (FS; Diener et al. 2010) and Brief Multidimensional Students Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS; Huebner et al. 2004). The effect of demographic variables on different domains of PWI-SC indicated that adolescents who resided in rural areas and those who attended private school possessed a significantly higher score on PWI-SC. Well-being declined as age increased from early adolescent to middle adolescence to late adolescence. The results of this study are in agreement with the previous literature