Streptococcus mutans (MS) and its biotype I are the strains most frequently found in dental plaque of young children. Our results indicate that in children pyruvate kinase (PK) activity increases significantly in dental plaque, and this corresponds with caries progression. The MS strains isolated in this study or their main glycolytic metabolism connected with PK enzymes might be useful risk fa...

The ferret is a suitable small animal model for preclinical evaluation of efficacy of antiviral drugs against various influenza strains, including highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses. Rigorous pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) assessment of ferret data has not been conducted, perhaps due to insufficient information on oseltamivir PK. Here, based on PK data from several studies on both uninfe...

1. Let A be an n× n matrix with complex coefficients. Define trA to be the sum of the diagonal elements. Show that trA is invariant under conjugation, i.e., trA = trPAP for all invertible n× n matrices P. Proof. Let P be an invertible matrix. Let ~pk be the k-th row of P, ~qj the j-th column of P, and ~ ai the i-th column of A. The k-th row of the matrix PA is 〈~pk · ~ a1, . . . ,~pk · ~ an〉. S...

The response of Crassostrea gigas to prolonged hypoxia was investigated for the first time by analyzing the metabolic branch point formed by pyruvate kinase (PK) and hosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase (PEPCK). PK and PEPCK cDNAs were cloned and sequenced. The main functional domains of the PK sequence, such as the binding sites for ADP/ATP and phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP), were identified whereas th...

The pK(a) values of internal ionizable groups are usually very different from the normal pK(a) values of ionizable groups in water. To examine the molecular determinants of pK(a) values of internal groups, we compared the properties of Lys, Asp, and Glu at internal position 38 in staphylococcal nuclease. Lys38 titrates with a normal or elevated pK(a), whereas Asp38 and Glu38 titrate with elevat...

The proband with lifelong hemolytic anemia has a high phosphoenolypyruvate (PEP) erythrocyte pyruvate kinase (PK) variant substantially but incompletely normalized by the allosteric modifier fructose-i .6-diphosphate (F-i ,6-P2) with conversion of sigmoidal to hyperbolic kinetics. Heterozygotes in four generations express qualitatively identical but less severely abnormal kinetics and lack over...

The proband with lifelong hemolytic anemia has a high phosphoenolypyruvate (PEP) erythrocyte pyruvate kinase (PK) variant substantially but incompletely normalized by the allosteric modifier fructose-i .6-diphosphate (F-i ,6-P2) with conversion of sigmoidal to hyperbolic kinetics. Heterozygotes in four generations express qualitatively identical but less severely abnormal kinetics and lack over...