The ability to acquire iron from various sources has been demonstrated to be a major determinant in the pathogenesis of Neisseria meningitidis. Outside the cells, iron is bound to transferrin in serum, or to lactoferrin in mucosal secretions. Meningococci can extract iron from iron-loaded human transferrin by the TbpA/TbpB outer membrane complex. Moreover, N. meningitidis expresses the LbpA/Lbp...

A significant lag phase was observed in the accumulation of product for the reaction catalyzed by pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC) purified from mature maize kernels. The effects of pH, pyruvate, potassium chloride, PDC concentration, and Mg(2+)-thiamine pyrophosphate upon this lag and upon the observed cooperativity were investigated. PDC preincubated with Mg(2+)-thiamine pyrophosphate for six day...

Detailed studies of the properties of carotenoids isolated from diphenylamine-inhibited cultures of Rhodospirillum rubrum have revealed a number of novel structures which indicate new features of carotenoid biosynthesis in the photosynthetic bacteria. The dehydrogenation of phytoene to coloured carotenoids occurs by a sequence which is different from that in higher plants in that 7,8,11,12-tetr...

Impaired remyelination is critical to neuroinflammation in multiple sclerosis (MS), which causes chronic and relapsing neurological impairments. Recent studies revealed that immunomodulatory activity of statins in an experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) model of MS are via depletion of isoprenoids (farnesyl-pyrophosphate and geranylgeranyl-pyrophosphate) rather than cholesterol in im...

Heritable ectopic mineralization disorders represent a phenotypically diverse group of conditions characterized by deposition of calcium phosphate complexes in soft connective tissues. The prototype of such conditions is pseudoxanthoma elasticum, and related conditions with overlapping clinical features include generalized arterial calcification of infancy and arterial calcification due to CD73...

It was previously demonstrated that in the presence of beef spleen nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide glycohydrolase, 4(5)amino-5(4)-carboxamidoimidazole reacted irreversibly with nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide to form the pyrophosphate of adenosine 5’-phosphate and of 5(4)-amino-(4)5-carboxamidoimidazole ribonucleotide (i.e. the (5-amino-4-carboxamidoimidazole)adenine dinucleoside pyrophosph...

We have recently presented evidence indicating that during biosynthesis of squalene from farnesyl pyrophosphate by rat liver microsomes, 1 hydrogen atom attached to carbon 1 of 1 of the 2 precursor molecules condensing to squalene was exchanged for a hydride ion derived from reduced triphosphopyridine nucleotide (1). This conclusion was drawn from the observations, (a) that during synthesis of ...