Twenty kinds of amino acids are simplified into 3 types: hydrophobic amino acids (H), hydrophilic amino acids (P) and neutral amino acids (N). Each residue is reduced to a bead which locates in the position of the C?琢 atom. The off-lattice model is adopted and the relative entropy is used as a minimization function to predict the tertiary structure of a protein. A new contact intensity function is given to consist with protein design research based on the relative entropy. Testing on several real proteins from Protein Data Bank (PDB) shows the good results obtained with the model and method. The root mean square deviations (RMSD) of the predicted structures relative to the native structures range from 0.30 to 0.70 nm. A foundation for studying protein design using the HNP model and the relative entropy was made.

Objective To explore the effects of ZNF330 on erythroid differentiation of K562 cells and underlying mechanism .Methods Realtime PCR was performed to detect the expression of ZNF 330 in K562 cells induced by hemin .After CD34 +cells being infected by the recombination lentivirus ZNF 330-RNAi, Realtime PCR was applied to detect the expression of CD235a and γ-globin.The luciferase report assay was performed to examine if ZNF 330 could act as a trans-acting factor in 293T/17 cells.Co-Immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) was applied in 293T/17 cells to detect the interaction between ZNF 330 and ZNF408 which was involved in mRNA degradation .Results The ex-pression of ZNF330 was up-regulated after hemin treatment .The expression of CD235a andγ-globin decreased after inhibition expression of ZNF 330 had no effect on report gene .Co-Ip in two ways confirmed the direct binding be-tween ZNF330 and ZNF408 .Conclusions ZNF330 can promote erythroid differentiation , and a possible mecha-nism is that ZNF330 inhibits the function of ZNF 408 , a factor that is involved in mRNA degradation , through the interaction between the two proteins .

Objective: To investigate the expression of TTK (tyrosine and threonine protein kinase) in the process of colorectal cancer (CRC) development and its relationship to prognosis in CRC patients. Methods: Colitis-associated colon cancer model was induced by azoxymethane (AOM) and dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) in C57BL/6 mice. Mice at four different stages of colon cancer development were obtained, named AD1 (inflammation of the recovery), AD2 (mild dysplasia), AD3 (adenoma) and AD4 (adenocarcinoma), as well as negative control (no treatment). The expression of TTK was measured by real time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR) and immunohistochemical staining in mouse colon tissues and 24 pairs of CRC specimens. The relationship between TTK and prognosis was analyzed in a set of CRC genome-wide gene expression microarray data that was obtained from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) of National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). Results: The genome-wide microarray data from mouse AOM-DSS model indicated that the expression of TTK mRNA was gradually elevated during the development of colon cancer. The subsequent qPCR results showed that TTK mRNA levels in negative control, AD1, AD2, AD3 and AD4 groups were 1.05±0.42, 1.10±0.03, 1.38±0.15, 1.33±0.17 and 2.12±0.22, respectively. And TTK expression in AD2, AD3 and AD4 groups were significantly higher than that in negative control (P<0.05). The protein expression of TTK showed by immunohistochemical staining had similar tendency as the results of TTK mRNA. Besides that, the TTK mRNA levels in tumor tissues (0.71±0.10) from 24 CRC patients were significantly higher than those in paired adjacent normal tissues (0.18±0.04; P<0.001). The positive expression rate of TTK protein in 5 pairs of CRC clinical samples was 80.0%, and it was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal tissues (30.8%, P=0.014). Furthermore, according to a public transcriptomic data (GSE17536), the high levels of TTK were associated with poor prognosis in CRC patients. Conclusions Elevated expression of TTK is related to colonic carcinogenesis in both of mouse model and human CRC samples. TTK is a poor prognostic factor in CRC.