The frequencies of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) protein‐specific CD8 T cells, identified by the presence of intracellular IFN‐γ, were measured by flow cytometry following stimulation of freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with comprehensive peptide pools. These pools spanned the entire amino acid sequences of the HCMV pp65 and major immediate early (IE‐1) proteins and consisted of 15‐amino acid peptides with at least nine overlaps between neighboring peptides. As a result all potential CD8 T cell epitopes contained in these proteins were provided by the complete pools and, therefore, unlike with single epitopes, testing was independent of donor HLA type. Individual stimulating peptides from the same pools were identified in parallel experiments. Thus we found that our results with the complete pools using PBMC from 26 healthy HCMV‐seropositive donors were 100 % sensitive and specific with respect to predicting the presence of recognized epitopes in the respective proteins. In addition, cells from 15 renal transplant patients were tested with complete pools alone. While our results confirmed our previous contention that HCMV IE‐1 is an important CD8 T cell target, the technical improvement we made in order to address this question has clearly wider implications. Similar pools may be applied to examine the role of proteins from other pathogens, in autoimmune disease or following vaccination.
Cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) are short peptides able to penetrate cell membranes and translocate different cargoes into cells. Although recently the topic of many research articles, to our best knowledge no single systematic study of CPPs has been carried out as yet, meaning information can only by gathered piece by piece from different sources. We therefore decided to start analytical screening of CPP specificity in cell lines. We used 22 different CPPs, which have all been published before, and present the first analytical screen in 4 selected cell lines (MDCK, HEK293, HeLa, and Cos-7). Furthermore, we examined the influence of different conditions, such as protease inhibitors, incubation conditions, endocytosis inhibitors, temperature, and cytotoxicity. We clearly demonstrate that the 22 CPPs can be classified into 3 groups based on their internalization properties, even after trypsinization. Moreover, we show that additional agents, which should increase cellular uptake or dissolve endosomal/lysosomal entrapped CPPs, only have low effects. Our intensive screening under standardized conditions provides the opportunity to compare cellular uptake of CPPs, an important step for the use of CPPs as peptidic vectors in the medical field.
Background: Microtubule plus-end-tracking proteins (ϩTIPs) use microtubule tip localization signals (MtLSs) to target growing microtubule ends in an end-binding protein (EB)-dependent manner. Results: The data define the sequence determinants of a canonical MtLS. Conclusion: EB binding affinity and microtubule-tip tracking activity correlate. Significance: The data provide a basis to carry out genome-wide predictions of novel ϩTIPs.
Microtubule plus-end tracking proteins (+TIPs) are involved in virtually all microtubule-based processes. End-binding (EB) proteins are considered master regulators of +TIP interaction networks, since they autonomously track growing microtubule ends and recruit a plethora of proteins to this location. Two major EB-interacting elements have been described: CAP-Gly domains and linear SxIP sequence motifs. Here, we identified LxxPTPh as a third EB-binding motif that enables major +TIPs to interact with EBs at microtubule ends. In contrast to EB-SxIP and EB-CAP-Gly, the EB-LxxPTPh binding mode does not depend on the C-terminal tail region of EB. Our study reveals that +TIPs developed additional strategies besides CAP-Gly and SxIP to target EBs at growing microtubule ends. They further provide a unique basis to discover novel +TIPs, and to dissect the role of key interaction nodes and their differential regulation for hierarchical +TIP network organization and function in eukaryotic organisms.
The WW domains are known as the smallest naturally occurring, monomeric, triple-stranded, antiparallel beta-sheet domains. Hence, we chose the FBP28 WW domain as a model to investigate the stability of the beta-sheet structure at the amino acid level in the context of its function (ligand binding). The structure-function relationship was investigated through a complete substitution analysis of the FBP28 WW domain, with variants synthesized as a cellulose-bound peptide array. The functionality of the FBP28 WW domain variants was examined by probing the peptide array for ligand binding. In addition, selected FBP28 WW domain variants were investigated by CD measurements to determine the stability of the antiparallel beta-sheet structure. We discuss the correlation between structure stability and functionality for the FBP28 WW domain, as well as the effect of ligand-induced structure stabilization.
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