Celecoxib, a selective inhibitor of the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), has been shown to be a promising chemoprevention agent. The chemopreventive efficacy of celecoxib is believed to be a consequence of its COX-2-dependent and COX-2-independent effects on a variety of cellular processes including proliferation, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and immunosurveillance. In an attempt to identify proteo...

Bordetella pertussis, the human pathogen of whooping cough, when grown at 22 degrees C is nonvirulent and unable to bind eukaryotic cells. In response to a temperature shift to 37 degrees C, the bacterium acquires the ability to bind eukaryotic cells in a time-dependent fashion. By studying in vitro the temperature-induced transition, from the nonvirulent to the virulent state, we found that bi...

Cell stress proteins (CSPS) are a large and heterogeneous family of proteins, sharing two main characteristics: their levels and/or location are modified under stress and most of them can exert a chaperon function inside the cells. Nonetheless, they are also involved in the modulation of several mechanisms, both at the intracellular and the extracellular compartments. There are more than 100 pr...

Acetylated histone H3 lysine 56 (H3K56Ac) diminishes in response to DNA damage but is restored following DNA repair. Here, we report that CRL4DDB2 ubiquitin ligase preferentially regulates post-repair chromatin restoration of H3K56Ac through recruitment of histone chaperon CAF-1. We show that H3K56Ac accumulates at DNA damage sites. The restoration of H3K56Ac but not H3K27Ac, H3K18Ac and H3K14A...

The clinical importance of Acinetobacter baumannii is partly due to its natural ability to survive in the hospital environment. This persistence may be explained by its capacity to form biofilms and, interestingly, A. baumannii can form pellicles at the air-liquid interface more readily than other less pathogenic Acinetobacter species. Pellicles from twenty-six strains were morphologically clas...

BACKGROUND KaiA, KaiB and KaiC are cyanobacterial circadian clock proteins. KaiC contains two ATP/GTP-binding Walker's motif As, and mutations in these regions affect the clock oscillations. RESULTS ATP induced the hexamerization of KaiC. The Km value for the ATP for the hexamerization was 1.9 micro m. Triphosphate nucleotides bound to the two Walker's motif As, and their binding functioned c...

The product YkoN of the gene of unknown function, ykoN, of Bacillus subtilis Marburg has the pentapeptide lipase/esterase motif (Gly-X-Ser-X-Gly), and thus YkoN is expected to have a lipase or esterase activity. To characterize the expected enzyme activity the plasmid having a modified ykoN that include the sequence for His(x6) tag at its C-terminus of YkoN, which has 373 amino acid residues, w...

Effects of chemically-passive fire suppressants on laminar premixed hydrogen flames were investigated by combined use of microgravity experiments and computations. The experiments used a short-drop free-fall laboratory facility that provides at least 450 ms of 2 10 g. Near -limit laminar burning velocities were measured for outwardly propagating spherical stoichiometric hydrogen-air flames with...

The human GLB1 gene encodes a lysosomal beta-galactosidase (beta-Gal) and an elastin-binding protein (EBP). Defect of the EBP as a chaperon for tropoelastin and a component of receptor complex among neuraminidase-1 (NEU1) and protective protein/cathepsin A (PPCA) is suggested responsible for impaired elastogenesis in autosomal recessive beta-Gal, PPCA and NEU1 deficiencies. The purpose of this ...