Carbon utilization of bacterial communities is a key factor the biomineralization process in limestone-rich curst areas. An efficient carbon catabolism microbial community associated with availability sources such an ecological niche. As cave environments promote oligotrophic (carbon source stress) situations, present study investigated variations different substrate patterns soil and rock betw...

One- and two-dimensional (1)H NMR spectroscopy were used to study the biotransformation of two dietary glucosinolates, sinigrin (SIN), and glucotropaeolin (GTL) by the human digestive microflora in vitro. The molecular structures of the new metabolites issued from the aglycone moiety of the glucosinolate were identified, and the modulation of carbon metabolism was studied by quantifying bacteri...

Phytochelatin synthase (PCS) is a protease-like enzyme that catalyzes the production of metal chelating peptides, the phytochelatins, from glutathione (GSH). In plants, algae, and fungi phytochelatin production is important for metal tolerance and detoxification. PCS proteins also function in xenobiotic metabolism by processing GSH S-conjugates. The aim of the present study is to elucidate the ...

UDP-Glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) conjugate a glucuronyl group from glucuronic acid to a wide range of lipophilic substrates to form a hydrophilic glucuronide conjugate. The glucuronide generally has decreased bioactivity and increased water solubility to facilitate excretion. Glucuronidation represents an important detoxification pathway for both endogenous waste products and xenobiotics, in...

Xenobiotic metabolism is an active research topic but the limited amount of openly available high-quality biotransformation data constrains predictive modeling. Current database often default to commonly available information: which enzyme metabolizes a compound, but neither experimental conditions nor the atoms that undergo metabolization are captured. We present XMetDB, an open access databas...

Acrolein is an electrophilic a,b-unsaturated aldehyde of industrial, pharmaceutic, and toxicologic importance to which we are exposed in environmental, occupational, and therapeutic situations. Acrolein is known to exert different biologic effects through reactions with cellular macromolecules such as DNA, certain proteins, or glutathione. In many situations (such as in tobacco smoke or other f...

The nuclear pregnane X receptor (PXR) and constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) play central roles in protecting the body against environmental chemicals (xenobiotics). PXR and CAR are activated by a wide range of xenobiotics and regulate cytochrome P450 and other genes whose products are involved in the detoxification of these chemicals. In this report, we have used receptor-selective agonist...

Xenobiotics constantly influence biological systems through several means of interaction. These interactions are disturbed in type 2 diabetes, with implications for disease outcome. We aimed to study the implications of such disturbances on type 2 diabetes and rice consumption, the results of which could affect management of the disease in developing countries. In a type 2 diabetic rat model in...

Cytochrome P450 3A (CYP3A) enzymes constitute an important detoxification system that contributes to primary metabolism of more than half of all prescribed medications. To investigate the physiological and pharmacological roles of CYP3A, we generated Cyp3a-knockout (Cyp3a-/-) mice lacking all functional Cyp3a genes. Cyp3a-/- mice were viable, fertile, and without marked physiological abnormalit...

This paper describes one isolation procedure for two pulmonary cell types and discusses how these cells are being used for toxicological studies. Alveolar Type II cells and Clara cells have been isolated from rabbits and rats and separated into highly enriched fractions. The lungs were digested with protease, and the pulmonary cell digests were separated into discrete fractions on the basis of ...