Proteins Flashcards
(95 cards)
What is COPD?
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a common lung disease. Having COPD makes it hard to breathe. There are two main forms of COPD: Chronic bronchitis, which involves a long-term cough with mucus. Emphysema, which involves damage to the lungs over time (The enlargement of the alveoli accompanied by destruction of cell walls
What is the cause of COPD?
- Absence of normal inhibition of human neutrophil (leukocyte) elastase, a proteolytic enzyme in our bodies
- Elastase breaks down elastin, a normal structural component of lung tissue, but the inhibitor α-1-antitrypsin (AAT) protects the lung from the enzyme
What are the three main proteolytic enzymes in the body?
three main proteolytic enzymes produced naturally in your digestive system are pepsin, trypsin and chymotrypsin.
What are proteolytic enzymes?
enzymes involved in the breakdown of proteins into smaller polypeptides or amino acids
What is the number one reason for uncontrolled levels of circulating elastase?
Cigarette smoke (also hereditary - familial emphysema, hereditary deficiency of AAT)
What is elastase?
A serine protease (breaks down proteins and peptides)
What is the inhibitor of elastase?
α-1-antitrypsin
What is drug design?
Utilizing atomic-level 3D structural information to screen/synthesize tighter-binding (computer-aided drug design)
What are drugs?
chemical or biological substances that have some kind of physiological? or biochemical? effect on our bodies.
What are the targets of drugs mainly?
Drug targets are usually proteins, but are in some cases small regions of DNA or RNA
What are the three stages in drug development
Stage 1 : Drug discovery
Stage 2 : Pre-clinical development
Stage 3 :Clinical development
What is the approach taken for drug discovery?
- high-throughput screening: which allows scientists to test thousands of potential targets with thousands of diverse chemical compounds to identify a new drug-target combination.
- rational drug design: which involves designing and synthesising compounds based on the known structure of a specific target molecule
What is the aim of pre-clinical testing?
used to determine how best to develop the drug for its intended use.
It aims to establish how drugs are absorbed and distributed in the body, and how they are broken down and removed from the body.
What will the results of the pre-clinical testing be used to determine?
how to best formulate the drug for its intended clinical use, whether it would be most effective as a cream, a pill, an injection or a spray.
When is the compound ready for stage three of drug design?
These few drugs will then be submitted to the appropriate regulatory authorities and, if accepted, the compound can be taken on to clinical development
What is stage 3 of drug design, Clinical Development?
involves testing the drug on human volunteers to provide more information about its safety and effectiveness.By the end of the clinical development phase, most of the investigational new drugs will have been eliminated on the grounds of safety and effectiveness
What is the drug development funnel?
As drugs travel through the funnel, their number decreases as studies indicate problems with safety and/or effectiveness
How much of dry mass do proteins account for?
More than 50%
What is the range of protein functions?
Some proteins speed up chemical reactions whilst other protein functions include defense, storage, transport, cellular communication, movement and structural support
What is the function of enzymatic proteins and give an example
Function : Selective acceleration of chemical reactions
Example : Digestive enzymes catalyze the hydrolysis of bonds in food molecules
Why do we need Elastin?
you need elastin for integrity of cell) – but elastase chops it down because of the cells in our lungs cannot be rigid, they need to be supple. If you let elastase to do it too much, then COPD
What is the function of defensive proteins and give an example
Function : Protection against disease
Example : Antibodies inactivate and help destroy viruses and bacteria
What is the function of storage proteins and give examples
Function : Storage of amino aicds
Examples : -Casein, the protein of milk, is the major source of amino acids for baby mammals. -Plants have storage proteins in their seeds. -Ovalbumin is the protein of egg white, used as an amino acid source for the developing embryo.
What is the function of transport proteins and give an example
Function : Transport of substances
Examples : Haemoglobin, the iron-containing protein of vertebrate blood, transports oxygen from the lungs to other parts of the body.