Anti-MAL polyclonal antibody

The present study aims to: a) systematically map the of birth cohort studies from the South Asian region b) examine the major research foci and landmark contributions from these cohorts using reproducible scientometric techniques and c) offer recommendations on establishing new birth cohorts in Pakistan, building upon the strengths, weaknesses and gaps of previous cohorts. Bibliographic records for a total of 260 articles, published during through December 2018, were retrieved from the Web of Science (core database). All data were analysed using Microsoft Excel (2013), Web of Science platform and CiteSpace. A series of network analysis were then run for each time-period using the link reduction method and pathfinder network scaling. The co-cited articles were clustered into their homogeneous research clusters. The clusters were named using the Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) method that utilized author keywords as source of names for these clusters. The scientometric analyses of original research output from these birth cohorts also paint a pessimistic landscape in Pakistan- where Pakistani sites for birth cohorts contributed only 31 publications; a majority of these utilized the MAL-ED birth cohort data. A majority of original studies were published from birth cohorts in India (156), Bangladesh (63), and Nepal (15). Out of these contributions, 31 studies reported data from multiple countries. The three major birth cohorts include prospective and multi-country MAL-ED birth cohort and The Pakistan Early Childhood Development Scale Up Trial, and a retrospective Maternal and infant nutrition intervention cohort. In addition to these, a few small-scale birth cohorts reported findings pertaining to neonatal sepsis, intrauterine growth retardation and its effects on linear growth of children and environmental enteropathy.

The enzymatic reactions leading to the deamination of beta-lysine, lysine, or 2-aminoadipic acid are of great interest for the metabolic conversion of lysine to adipic acid. Enzymes able to carry out these reactions are not known, however ammonia lyases (EC 4.3.1.-) perform deamination on a wide range of substrates. We have studied 3-methylaspartate ammonia lyase (MAL, EC 4.3.1.2) as a potential candidate for protein engineering to enable deamination towards beta-lysine, that we have shown to be a competitive inhibitor of MAL. We have characterized MAL activity, binding and inhibition properties on six different compounds that would allow to define the molecular determinants necessary for MAL to deaminate our substrate of interest. Docking calculations showed that beta-lysine as well as the other compounds investigated could fit spatially into MAL catalytic pocket, although they probably are weak or very transient binders and we identified molecular determinants involved in the binding of the substrate. The hydrophobic interactions formed by the methyl group of 3-methylaspartic acid, together with the presence of the amino group on carbon 2, play an essential role in the appropriate binding of the substrate. The results showed that beta-lysine is able to fit and bind in MAL catalytic pocket and can be potentially converted from inhibitor to substrate of MAL upon enzyme engineering. The characterization of the binding and inhibition properties of the substrates tested here provide the foundation for future and more extensive studies on engineering MAL that could lead to a MAL variant able to catalyse this challenging deamination reaction.