A gene bank of Staphylococcus aureus strain Cowan I was established using an E. coli HB101/pBR327 host-vector system. Recombinants expressing staphylococcal protein A (SPA) were detected using an IgG-binding assay. A 3.2 Kb DNA fragment directing the synthesis of SPA in E. coli was identified. SPA produced by E. coli was characterised in minicells and by Western blotting and double diffusion ex...

Diarrheagenic Escherichia coli were able to bind to plant surfaces, including alfalfa sprouts and open seed coats, and tomato and Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings incubated in water. The characteristics of the binding differed with the bacterial strain examined. Laboratory K12 strains of E. coli failed to show significant binding to any of the plant surfaces examined, suggesting that some of the ...

Folding of DNA into chromatin is mediated by binding to histones such as H4; association of DNA with histones is regulated by covalent histone modifications, e.g. acetylation, methylation, and biotinylation. We sought to identify amino-acid residues that are biotinylated in histone H4, and to determine whether acetylation and methylation of histones affect biotinylation. Synthetic peptides span...

Macrophages are an important source of inflammatory cytokines generated during the innate immune response,but in the microenvironment of certain tumors,macrophages promote tumor progression through their preferential secretion of cytokines that support tumor cell growth and suppress antitumoral immune responses. KSHV is the causative agent of KS and lymphomas preferentially arising in immuno co...

An analysis of 503 available triosephosphate isomerase sequences revealed nine fully conserved residues. Of these, four residues-K12, H95, E97 and E165-are capable of proton transfer and are all arrayed around the dihydroxyacetone phosphate substrate in the three-dimensional structure. Specific roles have been assigned to the residues K12, H95 and E165, but the nature of the involvement of E97 ...

In this study, of the hundred Escherichia coli strains isolated from feral Pigeon faeces, eighty five strains were resistant to one or more antibiotics and fifteen sensitive to all the antibiotics tested. The only strain (among all antibiotic-resistant E. coli isolates) that possessed class 1 integron was PGB01. The dihydrofolate reductase gene of the said integron was cloned, sequenced and exp...

PURPOSE To describe a new method of culturing mouse corneal epithelial cells (MCECs). METHODS MCECs were isolated from C57/BL6 mouse corneas and cultured on type-I collagen-coated plastic dishes in low-calcium progenitor cell targeting medium (CnT-50). Expression of the mRNAs of N-terminal truncated isoform of p63 (DNp63), cytokeratin 12 (K12), and cytokeratin 14 (K14) were determined by reve...

Among K-ras mutations, codon 12 mutations have been identified as those conferring a more aggressive phenotype. This aggressiveness is primarily associated with slow proliferation but greatly increased resistance to apoptosis. Using transfected NIH3T3 fibroblasts with a mutated K-ras minigene either at codon 12 (K12) or at codon 13 (K13), and taking advantage of [1,2-C2]glucose tracer labeling,...