A total of 230 cultures of fungi and 43 cultures of bacteria, isolated from such sources as soil, butter, and milk, were screened for their milk-clotting activity. The fungi were cultivated on semisolid media, and the bacteria were grown in milk media in shake culture. Phytic acid, added as calcium phytate, was found to stimulate production of the enzyme in most of the bacterial isolates. Prote...

We have described previously (1) the study in vitro of a series of analogues and homologues of choline as substrates for the enzyme choline dehydrogenase. These compounds consisted of methylated and ethylated products, both simple and mixed, of ethanolamine, 1-aminopropanol-3, 2-amino-2-methylpropanol-1, 1-aminopropanol-2, and 2-amino-2-methyl1,3-propanediol, together with the parent amines. Of...

Various rod-shaped bacteria such as the canonical gram negative Escherichia coli or the wellstudied gram positive Bacillus subtilis divide symmetrically after they approximately double their volume. Their size at division is not constant, but is typically distributed over a narrow range. Here, we propose an analytically tractable model for cell size control, and calculate the cell size and inte...

Life forms can be roughly differentiated into those that are microscopic versus those that are not as well as those that are multicellular and those that, instead, are unicellular. Cellular organisms seem generally able to host viruses, and this propensity carries over to those that are both microscopic and less than truly multicellular. These viruses of microorganisms, or VoMs, in fact exist a...

Pine, Martin J. (Roswell Park Memorial Institute, Buffalo, N.Y.). Alcohol-soluble protein of microorganisms. J. Bacteriol. 85:301-305. 1963.-In two microbial systems, new protein synthesis has been reported to take place at the expense of a disappearing alcohol-soluble protein fraction. Studies were made to characterize the fraction and assess its storage function in Escherichia coli. Synthesis...

Magnetotactic bacteria from freshwater and marine sediments orient and navigate along geomagnetic field lines. Their magnetotactic response is based on intracellular, single magnetic domains of ferrimagnetic magnetite, which impart a permanent magnetic dipole moment to the cell.