scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Crystal structure of botulinum neurotoxin type A and implications for toxicity.

TLDR
The crystal structure of the entire 1,285 amino acid di-chain neurotoxin was determined and the toxin appears as a hybrid of varied structural motifs and suggests a modular assembly of functional subunits to yield pathogenesis.
Abstract
Botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT/A) is the potent disease agent in botulism, a potential biological weapon and an effective therapeutic drug for involuntary muscle disorders. The crystal structure of the entire 1,285 amino acid di-chain neurotoxin was determined at 3.3 A resolution. The structure reveals that the translocation domain contains a central pair of alpha-helices 105 A long and a approximately 50 residue loop or belt that wraps around the catalytic domain. This belt partially occludes a large channel leading to a buried, negative active site--a feature that calls for radically different inhibitor design strategies from those currently used. The fold of the translocation domain suggests a mechanism of pore formation different from other toxins. Lastly, the toxin appears as a hybrid of varied structural motifs and suggests a modular assembly of functional subunits to yield pathogenesis.

read more

Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

Neuronal selectivity of botulinum neurotoxins

TL;DR: A literature review of the neuronal selectivity of BoNTs is reported, finding that in in vivo models, BoNT/A impairs the cholinergic neuronal transmission at the motor-neurons but also at neurons controlling secretions and smooth muscle neurons, and blocks several neuronal pathways including excitatory, inhibitory, and sensitive neurons.
Journal ArticleDOI

Stability of botulinum neurotoxin type A, devoid of complexing proteins

TL;DR: NT201 was found to be stable without refrigeration for 48 months and even not affected by short-term temperature stress up to 60°C, demonstrating that complexing proteins are not required for the stability of BoNT/A preparations.
Patent

Pegylated mutated clostridium botulinum toxin

TL;DR: In this paper, a modified botulinum toxin which has a naturally occurring heavy chain and a modified light chain was described, where the modification of the light chain is characterized in that it comprises (i) on its N terminus an extension of the chain which has the structure -(C)n-(tag)m-(X)l- in the direction from the n terminus to the C terminus, C representing a cysteine group, tag representing any tag and X representing a group of any naturally occurring amino acid, n being an integer from 1 to 50
Book ChapterDOI

CD4+ T cells specific for factor VIII as a target for specific suppression of inhibitor production.

TL;DR: The murine hemophilia model will hopefully provide further insights into the mechanisms of inhibitor formation, and prove to be a suitable tool for the design and testing of therapeutic strategies aimed at preventing the development of fVIII inhibitors.
Journal ArticleDOI

Molecular immune recognition of botulinum neurotoxin B. The light chain regions that bind human blocking antibodies from toxin-treated cervical dystonia patients. Antigenic structure of the entire BoNT/B molecule.

TL;DR: The human Ab recognition of the entire BoNT/B molecule is presented and compared to the recognition of BoNT-A by human blocking Abs and the remaining peptides had little or no Ab-binding activity.
References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI

MOLSCRIPT: a program to produce both detailed and schematic plots of protein structures

TL;DR: The MOLSCRIPT program as discussed by the authors produces plots of protein structures using several different kinds of representations, including simple wire models, ball-and-stick models, CPK models and text labels.
Journal ArticleDOI

Improved methods for building protein models in electron density maps and the location of errors in these models.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors describe strategies and tools that help to alleviate this problem and simplify the model-building process, quantify the goodness of fit of the model on a per-residue basis and locate possible errors in peptide and side-chain conformations.
Journal ArticleDOI

Protein folding and association: insights from the interfacial and thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated in this work that the surface tension, water‐organic solvent, transfer‐free energies and the thermodynamics of melting of linear alkanes provide fundamental insights into the nonpolar driving forces for protein folding and protein binding reactions.
Journal ArticleDOI

Improved Fourier coefficients for maps using phases from partial structures with errors

TL;DR: In this article, a method is given to estimate the parameter σA in these phase probability expressions from the observed and calculated structure factor amplitudes, from which one can estimate the mean coordinate error for the model, and when there are coordinate errors, a new expression for the non-centric Fourier coefficients is required to suppress this model bias.
Journal ArticleDOI

Atomic structure of the ectodomain from HIV-1 gp41

TL;DR: X-ray crystallography determines the structure of the protease-resistant part of a gp41 ectodomain solubilized with a trimeric GCN4 coiled coil in place of the amino-terminal fusion peptide, and suggests a common mechanism for initiating fusion.
Related Papers (5)