Synthetic peptides derived from the prosegments of proprotein convertase 1/3 and furin are potent inhibitors of both enzymes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Proprotein convertases (PCs) are Ca(2+)-dependent serine proteases of the subtilisin/kexin family which are known specifically to cleave propeptide and proprotein substrates at the C-terminal of R-X-(K/R)-R/ to generate the relevant biologically active peptides. PCs are initially synthesized as enzymically inactive proenzyme forms where the prosegments play an important inhibitory role to the respective enzymes. Here we investigated whether synthetic peptides derived from the pro-region could also represent specific and potent inhibitors. Based upon sequence alignment, secondary structure analysis and hydrophilicity plot, a number of peptides ranging from 8 to 33 residues were selected. These included segments encompassing residues 55-62, 50-62, 39-62, 50-83, 55-83, 64-83 and 74-83 in the pro-mouse PC1/3 sequence and residues 54-62, 48-62 and 39-62 of the pro-human furin sequence. All peptides were prepared by solid-phase FastMoc chemistry, purified by reversed-phase HPLC and characterized by MS and amino acid analysis. These peptides were tested in vitro for inhibitory activity towards recombinant mouse PC1/3 and human furin. Progress-curve and end-time kinetic analysis demonstrated that a number of these peptides, particularly those containing both the primary and the secondary processing sites, displayed strong inhibition of both enzymes with inhibition constants (K (i)) in the high nanomolar range. Unlike the whole propeptide, these small synthetic peptide inhibitors exhibited either true competitive or mixed competitive inhibition, depending on the sequence. Our data revealed further the critical role of the last two basic amino acid residues (e.g. Lys(82)-Arg(83) for the mouse PC1/3 sequence) of the prodomain in imparting a strong anti-convertase activity. The study also establishes the inhibitory potential of certain regions contained within the prosegment of the two convertases.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".