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Life Sciences
Research from University of Pune broadens understanding of life sciences
June 17th, 2008
According to recent research from Pune, India, "Variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, encodes a soluble complement regulator named SPICE. Previously, SPICE has been shown to be much more potent in inactivating human complement than the vaccinia virus complement control protein (VCP), although they differ only in 11 amino acid residues." "In the present study, we have expressed SPICE, VCP, and mutants of VCP by substituting each or more of the 11 non-variant VCP residues with the corresponding residue of SPICE to identify hot spots that impart functional advantage to SPICE over VCP. Our data indicate that (i) SPICE is similar to 90-fold more potent than VCP in...
Source: TB & Outbreaks Week (2008-06-17)
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