Martins Tiago M, Domingos Ana, Berry Colin, Wyatt David M
Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação, Departamento de Biotecnologia, UTPAM, Edifício F, Estrada do Paço do Lumiar, 1649-038 Lisboa, Portugal.
Acta Trop. 2006 Feb;97(2):212-8. doi: 10.1016/j.actatropica.2005.11.001. Epub 2005 Dec 5.
The rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium chabaudi encodes one food vacuole plasmepsin-the aspartic proteinases important in haemoglobin degradation. A recombinant form of this enzyme was found to cleave a variety of peptide substrates and was susceptible to a selection of naturally occurring and synthetic inhibitors, displaying an inhibition profile distinct from that of aspartic proteinases from other malaria parasites. In addition, inhibitors of HIV proteinase that kill P. chabaudi in vivo were also inhibitors of this new plasmepsin. P. chabaudi is a widely used model for human malaria species and, therefore, the characterisation of this plasmepsin is an important contribution towards understanding its biology.
啮齿动物疟原虫恰氏疟原虫编码一种食物泡天冬氨酸蛋白酶——这是一种在血红蛋白降解中起重要作用的天冬氨酸蛋白酶。人们发现这种酶的一种重组形式能够切割多种肽底物，并且对一系列天然存在的和合成的抑制剂敏感，其抑制谱与其他疟原虫的天冬氨酸蛋白酶不同。此外，在体内能杀死恰氏疟原虫的HIV蛋白酶抑制剂也是这种新天冬氨酸蛋白酶的抑制剂。恰氏疟原虫是一种广泛用于研究人类疟原虫的模型，因此，对这种天冬氨酸蛋白酶的特性描述是对理解其生物学特性的一项重要贡献。
