Ca2+ transport across mammary-gland Golgi membranes was measured after centrifugation of the membrane vesicles through silicone oil. In the presence of 2.3 microM free Ca2+ the vesicles accumulated 5.8 nmol of Ca2+/mg of protein without added ATP, and this uptake was complete within 0.5 min. In the presence of 1 mM-ATP, Ca2+ was accumulated at a linear rate for 10 min after the precipitation of...

Aminoglycoside antibiotics such as streptomycin and tobramycin must traverse the bacterial cytoplasmic membrane prior to initiating lethal effects. Previous data on Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus subtilis have demonstrated that transport of aminoglycosides is regulated by delta psi, the electrical component of the proton motive force. However, several laboratories have ob...

The present study was designed to analyze the difference of the adeB gene expression levels under conditions of induced resistance and to verify the significance of the AdeABC efflux pump in the in vitro induction of Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii). Strains were isolated from blood or drainage samples in the First Hospital of China Medical University. The minimum inhibitory concentration...

BACKGROUND Many methods have been used to assess mitochondrial function. Technetium-99m sestamibi ((99m)Tc-MIBI), a lipophilic cation, is rapidly incorporated into myocardial cells by diffusion and mainly localizes to the mitochondria. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether measurement of (99m)Tc-MIBI signals in animal models could be used as a tool to quantify mitochondrial membr...

BACKGROUND During the last decades the rate of multidrug resistance among clinical Helicobacter pylori isolates has increased. Active pumping out of the drugs may be an important mechanism for multidrug resistance in H. pylori strains. OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to evaluate the association of two H. pylori efflux-genes, hp1181 and hp1184 with the active-efflux phenotype in MDR clini...

Apoptosis is common during spermatogenesis. Here, it was tested whether apoptosis could be induced in sperm after ejaculation. There were several lines of evidence to indicate that sperm are resistant to induction of apoptosis. First, incubation of bull sperm at temperatures characteristic of normothermia (38.5 degrees C) or heat shock (40 and 41 degrees C) for 4h did not increase the proportio...

background: acinetobacter baumannii is an important human pathogen with increasing notoriety in the recent years, as a causative organism of drug resistant nosocomial infections, particularly in immunocompromised patients hospitalized in burn centers. objectives: the aim of this study was to determinate the role of efflux pump(s) in ciprofloxacin resistance of a. baumannii strains isolated from...

The maximal capacity of the mitochondrial electron transport system (ETS) in intact cells is frequently estimated by promoting protonophore-induced maximal oxygen consumption preceded by inhibition of oxidative phosphorylation by oligomycin. In the present study, human glioma (T98G and U-87MG) and prostate cancer (PC-3) cells were titrated with different concentrations of the protonophore CCCP ...

results two- to four-fold decrease in minimum inhibitory concentration (mic) and two-fold increase in accumulation were observed for etbr in the presence of cccp for 67% (8) of 12 mdr strains. with cccp, two- to four-fold decrease in mic and 1.4- to 1.8-fold increase in the accumulation of β-lactames, tet, cip and mtz were obtained for 42% (5) of the mdr strains. six, five and three of the 12 m...

Research into the causes of both sporadic and familial Parkinson’s disease have led to the idea that a key risk factor might be mitochondrial dysfunction. The neurons of the substantia nigra, which are specifically lost in Parkinson’s disease, seem to be especially vulnerable to the effects of mitochondrial damage. Recent work showed that the protein Parkin, which is mutated in some forms of fa...