The osmotolerance of Saccharomyces rouxii 48-28 was confirmed with both NaCl- and KCl-fortified growth media, with more tolerance being exhibited for the potassium salt. Washed and buffered cells from unfortified medium were challenged with a variety of compounds (and also with physical treatments) that potentially would elicit membrane perturbations. The efficacy of these brief treatments was ...

Exposure of yeast cells to increases in extracellular osmolarity activates the Hog1 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). Activation of Hog1 MAPK results in induction of a set of osmoadaptive responses, which allow cells to survive in high-osmolarity environments. Little is known about how the MAPK activation results in induction of these responses, mainly because no direct substrates for Ho...

The importance of the content of anionic phospholipids [cardiolipin (CL) and phosphatidylglycerol (PG)] in the osmotic adaptation and in the membrane structure of Bacillus subtilis cultures was investigated. Insertion mutations in the three putative cardiolipin synthase genes (ywiE, ywnE and ywjE) were obtained. Only the ywnE mutation resulted in a complete deficiency in cardiolipin and thus co...

UNLABELLED A major challenge for the production of ethanol from biomass-derived feedstocks is to develop yeasts that can sustain growth under the variety of inhibitory conditions present in the production process, e.g., high osmolality, high ethanol titers, and/or elevated temperatures (≥ 40 °C). Using adaptive laboratory evolution, we previously isolated seven Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains ...

The accumulation of proline under environmental stress is a conserved response of plants. Five decades have passed since the first report of proline accumulation in plants (Barnnet and Naylor, 1966). Many hypotheses have been put forward regarding assignment of a function to proline. These proposed roles include antioxidant capacity, osmoprotection, signaling, developmental function, and contri...

Staphylococcus aureus has three types of cation/proton antiporters. The type 3 family includes two multisubunit Na+/H+ (Mnh) antiporters, Mnh1 and Mnh2. These antiporters are clusters of seven hydrophobic membrane-bound protein subunits. Mnh antiporters play important roles in maintaining cytoplasmic pH in prokaryotes, enabling their survival under extreme environmental stress. In this study, w...

BACKGROUND Bacterial cellulose (BC) is a nanostructured material with unique properties and wide applicability. In order to decrease the production cost of bacterial cellulose, lignocellulose-based media have considerable potential as alternative cost-effective feedstocks. However, pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulose to sugars also generate fermentation inhibitors. Detoxific...

In food preservation, the synergistic combination of different technologies aims to maximize the total lethality of the process and minimize the intensity of each hurdle. This is especially the case when at least one of the treatments can cause sublethal (reparable) injury in a great proportion of the population, so that sublethally injured cells can end up being entirely inactivated by the oth...