ABSTRACT
Amyloid fibrils, which are formed from aggregates of aberrant proteins, can cause various forms of amyloidosis (including Alzheimer's disease). Such disorders often occur in elderly populations and are suspected to be lifestyle related. Thus, it has been speculated that some foodstuffs could be beneficial for preventing amyloidosis. In this study, we determine whether fibril formation by the hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) could be inhibited by conducting a thioflavin T assay followed by fluorescence and electron microscopy observations. The results demonstrated that four peptide specimens prepared by the hydrolysis of crude proteins from the egg white, egg yolk, chalazae, and eggshell membrane of hen eggs effectively inhibited HEWL fibril formation. Among the four specimens, peptides from chalazae exhibited the highest preventive ability. The superiority of chalaza peptides was also observed when fibril formation was assayed using a full-length human lysozyme and human amyloid ß peptide 1-42, which is the key factor for the development of Alzheimer's disease. Our study of the fibrillization of the human lysozyme also showed that metal ions (Zn2+, Ca2+, Co2+, Mn2+ and Al3+) promoted fibrillization, and their effects were abolished by the peptide specimens (especially by chalaza peptides). Thus, we conclude that chicken-egg proteins could be a convenient source of therapeutic materials for amyloidosis.
ABSTRACT
The pbp3 gene encoding PBP3 of Bacillus cereus was cloned and sequenced. For this purpose, PBP3 was first purified from B. cereus ts-4, and N-terminal amino acid sequences of the peptides obtained from the protease digests of the protein were analyzed. The B. cereus ts-4 pbp3 gene consisted of an open reading frame of 1,986 bp encoding 662 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular mass of 73,044 Da. The active site-motifs SXXK, SXN, and KTG are present at the positions 393, 452, and 590, respectively, in the deduced amino acid sequence. The pbp3 structural gene was ligated into the pET17 x b expression vector and pET-pbp3 was constructed. A protein was produced by the cells of E. coli carrying pET-pbp3. The produced protein migrated at about 75 kDa in SDS-polyacrylamide gel and strongly reacted with biotinylated ampicillin.
