In vitro and in silico investigations of the binding interactions between chlorophenols and trypsin.

Being the first-degree toxic pollutants, chlorophenols (CP) have potential carcinogenic and mutagenic activity and toxicity. Since there still lacks studies on molecular interactions of chlorophenols with trypsin, one major binding target of many exogenous environmental pollutants, the binding interactions between five chlorophenols, 2-CP, 2,6-DCP, 2,4,6-TCP, 2,4,6-TCP, 2,3,4,6-TCP and PCP and trypsin were characterized by the combination of multispectroscopic techniques and molecular modeling. The chlorophenols bind at the one main site of trypsin and the binding induces the changes of microenvironment and global conformations of trypsin. Different number of chloride atoms significantly affects the binding and the binding constants KA ranks as KA (2-CP) < KA (2,6-DCP) ≈ KA (2,4,6-TCP) < KA (2,3,4,6-TCP) < KA (PCP). These chlorophenols interacts with trypsin mainly through hydrophobic interactions and via hydrogen bonding interactions and aromatic-aromatic π-π stacking interaction. Our results offer insights into the binding mechanism of chlorophenols with trypsin and provide important information for possible toxicity risk of chlorophenols to human health.

[Exclusion of the association of five known mutations with congenital stationary nyctalopia in a large Chinese family].

OBJECTIVE: To detect gene mutations associated with autosomal dominant congenital stationary night blindness(ADCSNB) in a large Chinese family. METHODS: Genomic DNAs were extracted from peripheral blood samples of 16 affected and 14 unaffected family members. According to 5 missense mutations in 3 genes reported previously, 4 pairs of primers were designed and corresponding exons containing the five mutation sites were amplified by polymerase chain reaction. Amplified products were purified and sequenced by MegaBACE1000 capillary array electrophoresis DNA sequencer. Full field electroretinogram (ERG, ISCEV) of patients was recorded and analyzed by Roland Consult System. RESULTS: Dark-adapted ERG showed a-wave was normal, but b-wave of the patients was markedly decreased. None of the five missense mutations were detected in 16 affected and 14 unaffected family members. CONCLUSION: The molecular pathogenesis of ADCSNB in this family does not involve point mutations or deletions of these five sites, which indicates the heterogeneity of ADCSNB.

Splicing-site recognition of rice (Oryza sativa L.) DNA sequences by support vector machines.

MOTIVATION: It was found that high accuracy splicing-site recognition of rice (Oryza sativa L.) DNA sequence is especially difficult. We described a new method for the splicing-site recognition of rice DNA sequences. METHOD: Based on the intron in eukaryotic organisms conforming to the principle of GT-AG, we used support vector machines (SVM) to predict the splicing sites. By machine learning, we built a model and used it to test the effect of the test data set of true and pseudo splicing sites. RESULTS: The prediction accuracy we obtained was 87.53% at the true 5' end splicing site and 87.37% at the true 3' end splicing sites. The results suggested that the SVM approach could achieve higher accuracy than the previous approaches.