Staphylococcus xylosus (S. xylosus) is an AT-rich and coagulase-negative Staphylococcus (CNS). It is normally regarded as non-pathogenic, however, recent studies have demonstrated that it is related to human opportunistic infections and bovine mastitis. In addition, S. xylosus strains have the ability to form biofilm. Biofilms are also involved in chronic infections and antibiotic resistance, t...

Pseudomonads from environmental sources vary widely in their sensitivity to cadmium, but the basis for this resistance is largely uncharacterized. A chromosomal fragment encoding cadmium resistance was cloned from Pseudomonas putida 06909, a rhizosphere bacterium, and sequence analysis revealed two divergently transcribed genes, cadA and cadR. CadA was similar to cadmium-transporting ATPases kn...

Successful gene therapy depends on the development of efficient, non-toxic gene delivery systems. To accomplish this objective, our laboratory has focused on solid-phase synthesized peptide carriers, in which the amino acid sequence can be varied precisely to augment intracellular DNA transport. We previously determined that linear and branched co-polymers of histidine and lysine in combination...

BACKGROUND The non-pathogenic bacterium Mycobacterium smegmatis is widely used as a near-native expression host for the purification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins. Unfortunately, the Hsp60 chaperone GroEL1, which is relatively highly expressed, is often co-purified with polyhistidine-tagged recombinant proteins as a major contaminant when using this expression system. This is likely du...

A histidine-binding protein has been isolated from the shock fluid of osmotically shocked Salmonella typhimurium cells and has been purified by conventional techniques. It has a molecular weight of 25,000 and binds 1 histidine molecule per molecule of protein. The binding protein is stable to wide variations of temperature, ionic strength, and pH. It binds histidine with a KD of 1.5 pM. The pro...

Regulating gene expression directly at the mRNA level represents a novel approach in the control of cellular processes in all organisms. In this respect, RNA-binding proteins, while in the presence of their cognate ligands, play a key role by targeting the mRNA to regulate its expression through attenuation or anti-termination mechanisms. Although many proteins are known to use these mechanisms...