Spheroplasts were used to study the early interactions of newly synthesized outer membrane protein PhoE with periplasmic proteins employing a protein cross-linking approach. Newly translocated PhoE protein could be cross-linked to the periplasmic chaperone Skp at the periplasmic side of the inner membrane. To study the timing of this interaction, a PhoE-dihydrofolate reductase hybrid protein wa...

UNLABELLED The promoter most strongly induced upon activation of the Cpx two-component envelope stress response is the cpxP promoter. The 3' untranscribed region (UTR) of the cpxP transcript is shown to produce a small RNA (sRNA), CpxQ. We investigated the role of CpxQ in combating envelope stress. Remarkably, the two effectors specified by the transcript are deployed to combat distinct stresse...

Background: The construction of measurement matrix becomes a focus in compressed sensing (CS) theory. Although random matrices have been theoretically and practically shown to reconstruct signals, it is still necessary to study the more promising deterministic measurement matrix. Methods: In this paper, a new method to construct a simple and efficient deterministic measurement matrix, sparse kr...

IcsA is an outer membrane protein in the autotransporter family that is required for Shigella flexneri pathogenesis. Following its secretion through the Sec translocon, IcsA is incorporated into the outer membrane in a process that depends on YaeT, a component of an outer membrane beta-barrel insertion machinery. We investigated the role of the periplasmic chaperone Skp in IcsA maturation. Skp ...

A supersymmetric generalization of the Krichever map is used to construct algebro-geometric solutions to the various super KadomtsevPetviashvili (SKP) hierarchies. The geometric data required consist of a suitable algebraic supercurve of genus g (generally no t a super Riemann surface) with a distinguished point and local coordinates (z, 0) there, and a generic line bundle of degree g 1 with a ...

Skin-derived precursor (SKP) cells are a valuable resource for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, because they represent multipotent stem cells that differentiate into neural and mesodermal progenies. Previous studies suggest that the stem cell pool decreases with age. Here, we show that human multipotent SKP cells can be efficiently collected from adult cheek/chin skin, even in aged...

The basic biochemical and biophysical principles by which chaperone-bound membrane proteins are targeted to the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria for insertion and folding are unknown. Here we compare spontaneous folding of outer membrane protein A (OmpA) of Escherichia coli from its urea-unfolded form and from the complex with its periplasmic chaperone Skp into lipid bilayers. Skp facil...

*Corresponding author. E-mail addr Abbreviations used: BSA, bovine hVDAC1, voltage-dependent aniondomain of the autotransporter NalP OmpA, outer membrane protein A o isomerases; SurA, the survival factor WT-OmpA, wild type OmpA; YaeT The interactions of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) with the periplasmic chaperone Skp from Escherichia coli are not well understood. We have examined the binding o...

Introduction Schwann cells differentiated from skin-derived precursors (SKP-SCs) have been shown to promote histological and functional recovery in a contusion model of rat spinal cord injury [1]. Cellular bands of SKP-SCs bridge the lesion site which promote axon growth ensheathed by peripheral (Schwann cell) myelin of endogenous as well as transplant origins. In this work, we assess the myeli...

Human multipotent skin derived precursor cells (SKPs) are traditionally sourced from dissociated dermal tissues; therefore, donor availability may become limiting. Here we demonstrate that both normal and diseased adult human dermal fibroblasts (DF) pre-cultured in conventional monolayers are capable of forming SKPs (termed m-SKPs). Moreover, we show that these m-SKPs can be passaged and that c...