Integral membrane proteins (of the alpha-helical class) are of central importance in a wide variety of vital cellular functions. Despite considerable effort on methods to predict the location of the helices, little attention has been directed toward developing an automatic method to pack the helices together. In principle, the prediction of membrane proteins should be easier than the prediction of globular proteins: there is only one type of secondary structure and all helices pack with a common alignment across the membrane. This allows all possible structures to be represented on a simple lattice and exhaustively enumerated. Prediction success lies not in generating many possible folds but in recognizing which corresponds to the native. Our evaluation of each fold is based on how well the exposed surface predicted from a multiple sequence alignment fits its allocated position. Just as exposure to solvent in globular proteins can be predicted from sequence variation, so exposure to lipid can be recognized by variable-hydrophobic (variphobic) positions. Application to both bacteriorhodopsin and the eukaryotic rhodopsin/opsin families revealed that the angular size of the lipid-exposed faces must be predicted accurately to allow selection of the correct fold. With the inherent uncertainties in helix prediction and parameter choice, this accuracy could not be guaranteed but the correct fold was typically found in the top six candidates. Our method provides the first completely automatic method that can proceed from a scan of the protein sequence databanks to a predicted three-dimensional structure with no intervention required from the investigator. Within the limited domain of the seven helix bundle proteins, a good chance can be given of selecting the correct structure. However, the limited number of sequences available with a corresponding known structure makes further characterization of the method difficult.

Amide‐inducible expression of the aliphatic amidase system of Pseudomonas aeruginosa can be reconstituted in Escherichia coli with only the amidase structural gene amiE, the negative regulator amiC and the positive regulator amiR, a transcription antitermination factor. Complementation experiments in E. coli suggest that negative control of amidase expression by AmiC is mediated by a protein‐protein interaction with AmiR. Purified AmiC binds acetamide with a KD of 3.7 microM in equilibrium dialysis studies, and therefore AmiC appears to be the sensory partner of the AmiC/AmiR pair of regulatory proteins, responding to the presence of amides. Sequence analysis techniques suggest that AmiC is a member of the structural family of periplasmic binding proteins, but has a distinct and novel cytoplasmic role.

The activities of pyruvate dehydrogenase and oxoglutarate dehydrogenase can be reliably measured by coupling the production of NADH to the reduction of added cytochrome c. Maximum activities required the addition of NADH-cytochrome c reductase activity prepared from rat heart mitochondria. Compared to other spectrophotometric assays this method provides an eight-fold increase in sensitivity and is particularly suitable for use with small tissue samples such as needle-biopsy samples of human skeletal muscle. Measurements of activities in rat tissues showed them to be in the order skeletal muscle less than liver less than heart less than or equal to brown adipose tissue. Activities in normal human skeletal muscle were similar to those of rat muscle. In the rat tissues specific differences were seen in the relative activities of the two complexes and cytochrome c oxidase suggesting tissue-specific differences in the activities of the dehydrogenases and components of the electron-transport chain.