1. Shigella dysenteriae (Shiga) can, under the proper cultural conditions, produce a soluble toxin which is independent of the specific somatic polysaccharide antigen. A method is described for the rapid production of this toxin by an avirulent R variant of this organism. 2. The amount of bacterial protoplasm synthesized, and the yield of toxin produced, are very much increased when the culture...

Analysis of the reaction of dopa decarboxylase (DDC) with L-dopa reveals that loss of decarboxylase activity with time is observed at enzyme concentrations approximately equal to the binding constant, K(d), of the enzyme for pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP). Instead, at enzyme concentrations higher than K(d) the course of product formation proceeds linearly until complete consumption of the substra...

Intertidal individuals of Mytilus galloprovincialis were exposed to anaerobiosis in laboratory at 22°C and a set of biochemical metabolites and survival potential determined. Differences in survival potential between individuals emersed or kept in oxygen-free seawater were residual according to ST50 values (survival time, P≈0.05) but emersed individuals survived significantly longer when consid...

Two bacterial species with different metabolic features, namely, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Lactococcus lactis, were used as a comparative experimental model to investigate the antimicrobial target and mechanism of transferrins. In anaerobiosis, P. aeruginosa cells were not susceptible to lactoferrin (hLf) or transferrin (hTf). In aerobiosis, the cells were susceptible but O(2) consumption was ...

Ferric uptake regulator (Fur) and Fur-like proteins form an important family of transcriptional regulators in many bacterial species. In this work we have characterized a Fur-like protein, the peroxide regulator PerR, in an M1 serotype of Streptococcus pyogenes. To determine the role of PerR in S. pyogenes, we inactivated the gene by allelic replacement. PerR-deficient bacteria showed 48% reduc...

To improve the detection of Campylobacter spp. in retail broiler meat, a reference method (R subsamples) based on the enrichment of 25 g of meat in Bolton broth at 42°C under microaerobiosis was compared with an alternative method (A subsamples) consisting in the rinsing of meat samples for 30s in buffered peptone water with antimicrobials with incubation at 42°C under aerobiosis. One piece of ...

Saccharomyces cerevisiae transcribes two genes, ARE1 and ARE2, that contribute disproportionately to the esterification of sterols. Are2p is the major enzyme isoform in a wild-type cell growing aerobically. This likely results from a combination of differential transcription initiation and transcript stability. By using ARE1 and ARE2 promoter fusions to lacZ reporters, we demonstrated that tran...

Numerous gram-negative bacteria employ a cell-to-cell signaling mechanism, termed quorum sensing, for controlling gene expression in response to population density. Recently, this phenomenon has been discovered in Escherichia coli, and while pathogenic E. coli utilize quorum sensing to regulate pathogenesis (i.e., expression of virulence genes), the role of quorum sensing in nonpathogenic E. co...

New periodontal disease treatments are needed to prevent infection progression. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is one of the greatest pledges for this purpose. It involves the use of light of specific wavelength to activate a nontoxic photosensitizing agent in the presence of oxygen for eradication of target cells, and can be used for photokilling of microorganisms. This study evaluated in vitro th...

The ability to successfully adapt to changing host conditions is crucial for full virulence of bacterial pathogens. Staphylococcus aureus has to cope with fluctuating oxygen concentrations during the course of infection. Hence, we studied the effect of oxygen on glucose metabolism in non-growing S. aureus COL-S cells by in vivo(13)C-NMR. Glucose catabolism was probed at different oxygen concent...