We identified and biochemically characterized a novel surface-localized autolysin from Listeria monocytogenes serotype 4b, an 86-kDa protein consisting of 774 amino acids and known from our previous studies as the target (designated IspC) of the humoral immune response to listerial infection. Recombinant IspC, expressed in Escherichia coli, was purified and used to raise specific rabbit polyclo...

A minor-closed class of graphs is a set of labelled graphs which is closed under isomorphism and under taking minors. For a minor-closed class G, we let gn be the number of graphs in G which have n vertices. A recent result of Norine et al. [12] shows that for all minor-closed class G, there is a constant c such that gn ≤ c nn!. Our main results show that the growth rate of gn is far from arbit...

Palmitic, stearic, oleic, and linoleic acids at concentrations of 200 nmol/ml all inhibited autolysin activity 80% or more in whole cells or cell-free extracts. This concentration of the saturated fatty acids palmitic acid and stearic acid had little or no effect on the growth of whole cells or protoplasts. However, the unsaturated fatty acids oleic acid and linoleic acid induced lysis in both ...