Listeria monocytogenes is a gram-positive, facultative intracellular bacterium implicated in severe food-borne illness (listeriosis) in humans. The construction of well-defined gene replacements in the genome of L. monocytogenes has been instrumental to several genetic studies of the virulence and other attributes of the organism. Construction of such mutations by currently available procedures...

Monovalent Fab fragments from immunoglobulins, directed against Escherichia coli small ribosomal subunit proteins, were tested for their effect on poly(U)-directed synthesis of polyphenylalanine by rat liver ribosomes. Of the 18 Fabs tested, 3, anti-S10, anti-S12, and anti-S14, inhibited polyphenylalanine synthesis; antibodies against 3 of the 21 E. coli ribosomal proteins (S1, S16, and S17) we...

The review describes a number of indirect methods in nuclear astrophysics using radioactive beams: Coulomb dissociation, transfer reactions (the ANC method), breakup of loosely bound nuclei at intermediate energies, the use other spectroscopic measurements, including -decay studies and the determination of resonance parameters. The examples chosen are drawn from the experiments the author was i...

An enzyme in rat-liver cytosol transferred the gamma-phosphoryl of GTP to serine and threonine residues of at least four proteins (S6, S10, S14 or S15, and S17) of the small (40S) subunit of rat-liver ribosomes. A number of nonribosomal proteins in the enzyme preparation were also phosphorylated; they were preferentially and tightly bound to the large subunit. The enzyme could be distinguished ...

Genes responsible for the utilization of benzoate, anthranilate or catechol (ben, ant, cat) of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO were mapped precisely using a cosmid clone carrying all these genes. Genes were localized either by subcloning and complementation or by Tn5 mutagenesis and mapping of the Tn5 insertions. To achieve this, a novel Tn5 mutagenesis procedure was developed by constructing a Tn5 ...

The Be(p, γ)B reaction is one of the major source of uncertainties in estimating the B solar neutrino flux and is critical for undertsanding the Solar Neutrino Problem and neutrinos. The main source of uncertainty is the existence of conflicting data with different absolute normalization. Attempts to measure this reaction rate with Be beams are under way by the UConn-LLN collaboration, and we d...

Human ribosomal protein S17 (RPS17) is mutated in Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA), a bone marrow disorder that fails to produce sufficient red blood cells leading to anemia. Recently, an RPS17 protein sequence was also found to be naturally inserted in the genome of hepatitis E virus (HEV) from patients chronically-infected by HEV. The role of RPS17 in HEV replication and pathogenesis remains unk...