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Results for “AMINO ACID”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 289 records · Page 16
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Arsinothricin, an arsenic-containing non-proteinogenic amino acid analog of glutamate, is a broad-spectrum antibiotic

Abstract The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance highlights the urgent need for new antibiotics. Organoarsenicals have been used as antimicrobials since Paul Ehrlich’s salvarsan. Recently a soil bacterium was shown to produce the organoarsenical arsinothricin. We demonstrate that arsinothricin, a non-proteinogenic analog of glutamate that inhibits glutamine synthetase, is an effective broad-spectrum antibiotic against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, suggesting that bacteria have evolved the ability to utilize the pervasive environmental toxic metalloid arsenic to produce a potent antimicrobial. With every new antibiotic, resistance inevitably arises. The arsN1 gene, widely distributed in bacterial arsenic resistance ( ars ) operons, selectively confers resistance to arsinothricin by acetylation of the α-amino group. Crystal structures of ArsN1 N -acetyltransferase, with or without arsinothricin, shed light on the mechanism of its substrate selectivity. These findings have the potential for development of a new class of organoarsenical antimicrobials and ArsN1 inhibitors.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Direct air capture with amino acid solvent: Operational optimization using a crossflow air‐liquid contactor

Direct air capture (DAC) is a negative emission technology for removing CO2 from the atmosphere to maintain the CO 2 level within a reasonable range so as to address greenhouse effects. In this study, the operational optimization of lab-scale DAC has been investigated using a crossflow air-liquid contactor loaded with a three dimensionally printed Gyroid packing structure and a potassium sarcosinate solvent. The effects of various parameters, including feed air flow rate, liquid solvent flow rate, contactor geometry, and ambient temperature, are examined. The results demonstrate that the Gyroid packing design achieves comparable CO 2 capture performance to conventional packed beds but with a significantly lower pressure drop of up to 77.8%, suggesting its potential as an efficient and cost-effective solution for gas–liquid contactors in DAC. Additionally, the study explores the climate impact on CO 2 capture performance and finds that as the air temperature increases from 35 to 95°F at a fixed relative humidity of 80%, the CO 2 capture rate increased from 23.2% to 46.8% with better stability. The research highlights the importance of optimizing contactor design and operational conditions to improve the CO 2 capture rate and feasibility of DAC systems as a negative emission technology for addressing greenhouse effects.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2013

Amino acid treatment enhances protein recovery from sediment and soils for metaproteomic studies

Characterization of geomicrobial protein expression provides information necessary to better understand the unique biological pathways that occur within soil microbial communities and the role they play in regulating atmospheric CO2 levels and the Earth’s climate. A significant challenge in studying soil microbial proteins is their initial dissociation from the complex mixture of particles found in natural soil. Due to bias of the most robust cells, the removal of intact bacterial cells limits the characterization of the complete representation of a microbial community. However, in-situ lysis of bacterial cells leads to the expulsion of proteins to the soil surface, which can lead to potentially high levels of adsorption due to the physicochemical properties of both the protein and the soil. We investigated various compounds for their ability to block protein adsorption soil sites prior to in-situ lysis of bacterial cells, as well as their compatibility with both tryptic digestion and mass spectrometric analysis. The treatments were tested by adding lysed Escherichia coli proteins to representative treated and untreated soil samples. The results show that it is possible to significantly increase protein identifications through blockage of binding sites on a variety of soil textures; use of an optimized desorption buffer further increases the number of identifications.

block protein adsorption↗
DOE OSTI2026

Critical amino acid residues in the N-terminal domain of NADPH-dependent assimilatory sulfite reductase flavoprotein mediate octameric assembly

How large, flexible enzymes assemble into defined oligomeric architectures remains a central question in biology. NADPH-dependent assimilatory sulfite reductase (SiR) forms a heterododecamer built on an octameric flavoprotein (SiRFP) core, yet the molecular basis for this assembly has been unresolved because of its disordered N-terminus. Here, we use ion mobility mass spectrometry, small-angle neutron scattering, and mutagenesis to define the mechanism of SiRFP oligomerization. We show that SiRFP forms a discrete, stable octamer in solution. We also report that its N-terminal 52-residue segment is necessary and sufficient to mediate assembly, also mediating oligomerization when fused to a heterologous protein. Structure-guided mutagenesis identifies four residues (Gln22, Tyr39, Phe40, and Gln47) whose substitution disrupts the octamer, producing concentration-dependent lower-order species while retaining catalytic activity. These findings define the determinants of SiRFP assembly with broader implications for engineering homomeric protein complexes.

Nagy, Gergely [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000327420198)↗
DOE OSTI2015

Site specific oxidation of amino acid residues in rat lens γ-crystallin induced by low-dose γ-irradiation

Although cataracts are a well-known age-related disease, the mechanism of their formation is not well understood. It is currently thought that eye lens proteins become abnormally aggregated, initially causing clumping that scatters the light and interferes with focusing on the retina, and ultimately resulting in a cataract. The abnormal aggregation of lens proteins is considered to be triggered by various post-translational modifications, such as oxidation, deamidation, truncation and isomerization, that occur during the aging process. Such modifications, which are also generated by free radical and reactive oxygen species derived from γ-irradiation, decrease crystallin solubility and lens transparency, and ultimately lead to the development of a cataract. In this study, we irradiated young rat lenses with low-dose γ-rays and extracted the water-soluble and insoluble protein fractions. The water-soluble and water-insoluble lens proteins were digested with trypsin, and the resulting peptides were analyzed by LC-MS. Specific oxidation sites of methionine, cysteine and tryptophan in rat water-soluble and -insoluble γE and γF-crystallin were determined by one-shot analysis. The oxidation sites in rat γE and γF-crystallin resemble those previously identified in γC and γD-crystallin from human age-related cataracts. Our study on modifications of crystallins induced by ionizing irradiation may provide useful information relevant to human senile cataract formation. - Highlights: • Low-dose γ-rays induced oxidation at specific residues in γE- and γF-crystallin. • The number of oxidation sites was higher in insoluble than soluble crystallins. • γ-Irradiation closely mimics the oxidation that occur in senile human cataracts.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗