did not affect the exponential growth rate but did confer a strong selective disadvantage on the mutant when it was competed against wild-type. The negative selection did not appear to be acting at either the exponential or stationary phase. Transformation with a plasmid vector conferring carbenicillin resistance and growth in carbenicillin markedly increased the selective disadvantage, as did growth at 42 8C, and both together were approximately additive such that three cycles of competitive growth sufficed to reduce the mutant strain to ;0.2% of its original value. The most striking finding was that all growth effects could be reversed by transformation with a plasmid carrying a truB gene coding for a D48C mutation in TruB. Direct analysis showed that this mutant did not make C55 under the conditions of the competition experiment. Therefore, the growth defect due to the lack of TruB must be due to the lack of some other function of the protein, possibly an RNA chaperone activity, but not to the absence of C55.

IL-1R-associated kinase (IRAK)4 plays a central role in innate and adaptive immunity, and is a crucial component in IL-1/TLR signaling. We have determined the crystal structures of the apo and ligand-bound forms of human IRAK4 kinase domain. These structures reveal several features that provide opportunities for the design of selective IRAK4 inhibitors. The N-terminal lobe of the IRAK4 kinase domain is structurally distinctive due to a loop insertion after an extended N-terminal helix. The gatekeeper residue is a tyrosine, a unique feature of the IRAK family. The IRAK4 structures also provide insights into the regulation of its activity. In the apo structure, two conformations coexist, differing in the relative orientation of the two kinase lobes and the position of helix C. In the presence of an ATP analog only one conformation is observed, indicating that this is the active conformation.

The gene for RsuA, the pseudouridine synthase that converts U516 to pseudouridine in 16S ribosomal RNA of Escherichia coli, has been deleted in strains MG1655 and BL21/DE3. Deletion of this gene resulted in the specific loss of pseudouridine516 in both cell lines, and replacement of the gene in trans on a plasmid restored the pseudouridine. Therefore, rsuA is the only gene in E. coli with the ability to produce a protein capable of forming pseudouridine516. There was no effect on the growth rate of rsuA -MG1655 either in rich or minimal medium at either 24, 37, or 42 8C. Plasmid rescue of the BL21/DE3 rsuA -strain using pET15b containing an rsuA gene with aspartate102 replaced by asparagine or threonine demonstrated that neither mutant was active in vivo. This result supports a role for this aspartate, located in a unique GRLD sequence in this gene, at the catalytic center of the synthase. Induction of wild-type and the two mutant synthases in strain BL21/DE3 from genes in pET15b yielded a strong overexpression of all three proteins in approximately equal amounts showing that the mutations did not affect production of the protein in vivo and thus that the lack of activity was not due to a failure to produce a gene product. Aspartate102 is found in a conserved motif present in many pseudouridine synthases. The conservation and distribution of this motif in nature was assessed.

Organic impurities in compound libraries are known to often cause false-positive signals in screening campaigns for new leads, but organic impurities do not fully account for all false-positive results. We discovered inorganic impurities in our screening library that can also cause positive signals for a variety of targets and/or readout systems, including biochemical and biosensor assays. We investigated in depth the example of zinc for a specific project and in retrospect in various HTS screens at Roche and propose a straightforward counter screen using the chelator TPEN to rule out inhibition caused by zinc.