Microorganisms play an important role in the biomineralization of gold. Two types of proteins participate in this process, namely, Slayer proteins and metallothioneins. These proteins may be used for the creation of biosensors based on hybrid microorganisms obtained by genetic engineering methods with high affinity for gold ions. We used bioinformatic methods to, obtain information about the primary structures of these proteins in FASTA format, to conduct multiple alignment of their amino acid sequences and identify characteristic motives in their primary structures.

A role of vegetable proteins in reducing blood cholesterol and coronary artery disease risk was postulated as long ago as 1909 in Russia by Ignatowski (1). The earliest study demonstrating significant cholesterol-lowering effect of soy-proteinbased diet was carried out in 1967 by Hodges et al. (2), who demonstrated serum cholesterol decrease from 7.7 mmol/L to about 5.0 mmol/L in six subjects with hypercholesterolemia after 4 wk of treatment. Several investigators have studied the potential of soybean proteins to help lower plasma cholesterol in normocholesterolemic and hypercholesterolemic individuals. Most of the experiments have involved a partial or total replacement of animal proteins in the diet with soy protein preparations that vary in the degree of purity. Diets have been fed generally for 3-6 wk in a crossover design, in which the patients serve as their own control subjects (1). The meta-analysis of 38 controlled clinical trials revealed that ingestion of soy protein was associated with the following net changes in serum lipid concentrations: total cholesterol, a decrease of 23.2 mg per deciliter or 9.3 percent; low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, a decrease of 21.7 mg per deciliter or 12.9 percent; and triglycerides, a decrease of 13.3 mg per deciliter or 10.5 percent. The changes in serum cholesterol and LDL cholesterol concentrations were directly related to the initial serum cholesterol concentration, it was clearly established that the reduction in plasma cholesterol was inversely related to the baseline degree of cholesterolemia (3). The Food and Drug Administration of the USA and the American Heart Association recommend daily consumption of 25 g of soy protein to control blood cholesterol (4). However, this conclusion is based mainly on studies with whole soy foods, which contains several components of soy beans that influence blood lipids (5). The results of studies with soy protein isolate (SPI) are less consistent and recent meta-analysis shows that favorable results were observed only in studies with quite high amounts of soybean protein (5) and that there were no effects when the participants consumed 25g of SPI daily for 6 weeks (6,7). These findings suggest that at least 30g of soy protein and more than 6 weeks administration are necessary to achieve favorable changes in blood lipid concentrations. From the practical point of view the amount of soy protein that should be consumed daily is very important. If the amount is too high, few people can follow a program in daily life and the results will remain only as research findings without practical substance. This is especially important for people who are not familiar with soy foods and in particular for Russians.In a crossover design study with a group of 30 subjects (9 males and 21 females) aged between 32 and 64 with mild hyperlipidemia (fasting serum total cholesterol 240-330 mg/dl, non-HDL-cholesterol 150-280 mg/dl, HDL-cholesterol 40-70 mg/dl, and triglycerides 100-280 mg/dl.) we have shown that by the consumption of 30 g of ...