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Not all (non-canonical) amino acids are made equal

Replacing methionine with one of its analogs in proteins is becoming routine for the team from the Laboratory of Structure and Function of biomolecules. Therefore, they expected they would be able to expand the approach to other methionine analogs, predict the substitution ratio based on the known kinetic parameters of methionyl-tRNA synthetase, a key enzyme in the process, and even acquire proteins with higher analog content by employing bacteria with a blocked methionine synthesis pathway for expression. Their latest article, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, revealed that these expectations were far from reality and how, in complete accordance with Murphy’s laws, methionine substitution is more efficient in modified proteins with fewer practical applications.

Published Oct 01, 2023

New Head of the Department of Biochemistry

Start date Feb 15, 2023

The Department of Biochemistry welcomes Prof. RNDr. Helena Ryšlavá, CSc. as its new head. She took over the position in mid-February.

Published Apr 26, 2023

Is it better to drink tea made from the leaves or roots of Agrimonia eupatoria L. or Origanum vulgare L.? And how does the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa like it?

The search for active natural substances in medicinal plants and their inhibitory effect on the growth of P. aeruginosa bacterium is the subject of a new scientific paper by the team of the Department of Biochemistry, which includes talented high school students Eliška Sladkovská and Daniel Šmíd.

Published Apr 26, 2023

Heme, heme, is oxygen here?

You have probably heard that aristocrats have blue blood, right? Of course, it is not true. We all have blood of a beautiful red color, thanks to a protein called hemoglobin – the blood pigment. This protein has a non-protein part called heme, which carries oxygen in our blood from lungs to a whole body. Besides being an oxygen carrier, heme has a much wider set of tasks in various proteins of many organisms. For example, bacteria use heme in oxygen sensor proteins to orient themselves in the environment. The team of Assoc. Prof. Markéta Martínková from the Faculty of Science, Charles University has recently published a new mini-review focused on the mechanisms of action of those proteins.

Published Jan 11, 2023

From the atom to NK cell: the story of an unexpected protein structure

The discovery of a peculiar protein structure and the quest to confirm it led to the description of interacting receptor clusters on NK cells. The study by the research teams of Dr. Ondřej Vaněk from the Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Charles University, and Dr. Jan Dohnálek from the Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in the center BIOCEV was recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

Published Oct 03, 2022

Do you want to protect plants ecologically and effectively? Try using Pythium oligandrum!

A review published recently by our colleagues Kateřina Bělonožníková, Veronika Hýsková, Josef Chmelík, Daniel Kavan and Helena Ryšlavá is focused on the interactions between plants and the oomycete Pythium oligandrum. In collaboration with Noemi Čeřovská from the Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences they summarized new data on proteins, elicitors and metabolism of P. oligandrum, and emphasize potential role of this oomycete in the plant protection.

Published Sep 12, 2022

Elucidation of metabolism of the anticancer drug lenvatinib as a possible path to personalized therapy

The research team from the Laboratory of Molecular Carcinogenesis and Drug Development at our department has joined forces with colleagues from Mendel University in Brno to publish a study that consistently monitors possible pathways of metabolic oxidation of one of the tyrosine kinase inhibitors, lenvatinib (https://doi.org). /10.1016/j.biopha.2021.112391). Lenvatinib is a drug used in the treatment of several cancers and is also the most efficient tyrosine kinase inhibitor in the treatment of thyroid tumours.

Published Feb 02, 2022

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