Kai Jiang

Jan 2, 2025 | nature.com | Jianwen Wang |Kai Jiang |Takeshi Nakano |Masaru Tanokura |Takuya Miyakawa |Tadao Asami | +5 more

The smoke-derived butenolides, karrikins (KARs), regulate many aspects of plant growth and development. However, KARs and a plant hormone, strigolactones (SLs), have high resemblance in signal perception and transduction, making it hard to delineate KARs response due to the shortage of chemical-genetic tools. Here, we identify a triazole urea KK181N1 as an inhibitor of the KARs receptor KAI2. KK181N1 selectively depress the KAR-induced phenotypes in Arabidopsis. We further elucidate the antagonistic, KAI2 binding mechanism of KK181N1, showing that KK181N1 binds to the catalytic pockets of KAI2 in a non-covalent binding manner. Our experiments also demonstrate the binding affinity of triazole urea compounds are regulated by the structured water molecule networks. By fine-tuning this network, we successfully develop a more potent derivative of KK181N1. We anticipate that these chemicals will be applicable to the elucidation of KARs biology, especially for discriminating the molecular and physiological aspects of KARs and SL signaling. Here, the triazole urea compound KK181N1 is identified as a Karrikin signaling-specific antagonist with a non-covalent binding mode, contrasting the covalent binding of the D14 antagonist KK094. This chemical tool holds potential in discriminating the KARs and SL signaling.

Oct 18, 2024 | mdpi.com | Tao Zhang |Yiming Wu |Xian Liu |Kai Jiang

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

Feb 29, 2024 | nature.com | Dipti Rai |Victor Yin |Yixin Xu |Eugene A. Katrukha |Maarten A.F. Altelaar |Kai Jiang | +1 more

Abstractγ-Tubulin ring complex (γ-TuRC) is the major microtubule-nucleating factor. After nucleation, microtubules can be released from γ-TuRC and stabilized by other proteins, such as CAMSAPs, but the biochemical cross-talk between minus-end regulation pathways is poorly understood. Here we reconstituted this process in vitro using purified components. We found that all CAMSAPs could bind to the minus ends of γ-TuRC-attached microtubules.

Dec 21, 2023 | pubs.rsc.org | Ting Wang |Kai Jiang |Yifan Wang |Limei Xu

Prolonged near-infrared fluorescence imaging of microRNAs and proteases in vivo by aggregation-enhanced emission from DNA-AuNCs Nanomachines Developing a comprehensive strategy for imaging of various biomarkers (i.e., microRNAs and proteases) in vivo is an exceptionally formidable task. Herein, we have designed a deoxyribonucleic acids-gold nanocluster (DNA-AuNCs) nanomachine for detecting tumor-related TK1 mRNA and cathepsin B in living cells and in vivo.

Dec 15, 2023 | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Qi Fan |Kai Jiang |Bo Liu |Huanfeng Jiang

1 Introduction Dearomatization reactions provide fundamental methods for converting abundant planar aromatics into elaborated 3D molecules.[1-6] After receiving considerable attention in the synthetic community, Pd(0) and π-allyl Pd(II) have clearly defined mechanisms.[7-11] The current pathways for Pd-catalyzed dearomatization of (hetero)arenes are mostly two-electron processes, requiring harsh reaction conditions, such as high temperature, to overcome the energy barrier of the dearomative...