Publications

Escherichia coli YjeE is a broadly conserved bacterial ATPase of unknown function that has been widely characterized as essential. Here, the transcriptional regulation of the promoter of yjeE (P yjeE) was probed using a luciferase reporter and 172 antibiotics of diverse mechanisms. Norfloxacin and other fluorquinolones were found to be the most potent activator of […]

Alternative splicing of tau exon 10 produces tau isoforms with either 3 (3R) or 4 (4R) repeated microtubule-binding domains. Increased ratios of 4R to 3R tau expression, above the physiological 1:1, leads to neurofibrillary tangles and causes neurode-generative disease. An RNA stem loop structure plays a significant role in determining the ratio, with decreasing stability […]

This study describes a method for mining and modeling binding data obtained from a large panel of targets (in vitro safety pharmacology) to distinguish differences between promiscuous and selective compounds. Two naïve Bayes models for promiscuity and selectivity were generated and validated on a test set as well as publicly available drug databases. The model […]

Preclinical Safety Pharmacology (PSP) attempts to anticipate adverse drug reactions (ADRs) during early phases of drug discovery by testing compounds in simple, in vitro binding assays (that is, preclinical profiling). The selection of PSP targets is based largely on circumstantial evidence of their contribution to known clinical ADRs, inferred from findings in clinical trials, animal […]

The range of molecular properties of generally recognized as safe (GRAS) compounds that are typically used in food and beverage products is compared to marketed drugs. It is observed that GRAS compounds differ from marketed drugs with respect to several molecular descriptors, including molecular weight, H-bond acceptor count, H-bond donor count, aromatic ring count, basic […]

Chitinases hydrolyse the ??(1,4)-glycosidic bonds of chitin, an essential fungal cell wall component. Genetic data on a subclass of fungal family 18 chitinases have suggested a role in??cell wall morphology. Specific inhibitors of these enzymes would be useful as tools to study their role in cell wall morphogenesis and could possess antifungal properties. Here, we […]