Syed Dustaghir Saib, an old man aged about 60, came under my treatment some 15 days ago. He told me that he had been suffering for the last 6 months from, what he called, obstruction of breathing through the nose, and the power of smelling had been impaired. When I examined him I found a small gela.inous tumour about the size of an almond hanging behind the soft palate, and on introducing my fi...

Tannic acid (TA), a naturally occurring polyphenol, is a potent anti-oxidant with anti-proliferative effects on multiple cancers. However, its ability to modulate gene-specific expression of tumour suppressor genes and oncogenes has not been assessed. This work investigates the mechanism of TA to regulate canonical and non-canonical STAT pathways to impose the gene-specific induction of G1-arre...

Streptococcus mutans is responsible for causing dental caries in humans and utilizes sucrose for its growth. The dextransucrase (EC 2.4.1.5) is responsible for sucrose metabolism, which exhibits both hydrolytic and glucosyltransferase activities. In this study, we examined the effects of the plant phenols, namely gallic, tannic and syringic acids and aqueous extracts of certain traditionally us...

Bacterial two-component regulatory systems (TCSs) facilitate changes in gene expression in response to environmental stimuli. TCS BaeR regulons influence tigecycline susceptibility in Acinetobacter baumannii through positively regulating the pump genes adeA and adeB. In this study, we demonstrate that an additional two transport systems, AdeIJK and MacAB-TolC, are also regulated by BaeSR. In th...

In commercial production settings, few options exist to prevent or treat angular leaf spot (ALS) of strawberry, a disease of economic importance and caused by the bacterial pathogen Xanthomonas fragariae. In the process of isolating and identifying X. fragariae bacteria from symptomatic plants, we observed growth inhibition of X. fragariae by bacterial isolates from the same leaf macerates. Ide...

Prion propagation is mediated by the structural alteration of normal prion protein (PrPC) to generate pathogenic prion protein (PrPSc). To date, compounds for the inhibition of prion propagation have mainly been screened using PrPSc-infected cells. Real time-quaking-induced conversion (RT-QuIC) is one alternative screening method. In this study, we assessed the propagation inhibition effects of...

It has been hypothesized that herbivores host tannin-degrading bacteria (TDB) to overcome the toxic challenges posed by plant tannins. While TDB have been isolated from the guts of numerous mammals, their functional significance to their hosts has never been explicitly tested. We introduced TDB into lab rats, which do not host TDB, and measured host performance on tannin-rich diets. We first is...

Subunit structure in the walls of sectioned microtubules was first noted by Ledbetter and Porter (6), who clearly showed that certain microtubules of plant meristematic cells have 13 wall protofilaments when seen in cross section. Earlier, protofilaments of microtubular elements had been described in negatively stained material, although exact counts of their number were difficult to obtain. In...