Amphibians have a large variety of antimicrobial peptides that serve as natural innate barriers limiting microbial infection or, in some instances, act as an integral component in response to inflammation or microbial infection. A novel peptide with antibacterial effects and without hemolytic activity was purified from skin secretions of Rana ridibunda by multisteps cation-exchange FPLC, revers...

amphibians have a large variety of antimicrobial peptides that serve as natural innate barriers limiting microbial infection or, in some instances, act as an integral component in response to inflammation or microbial infection. a novel peptide with antibacterial effects and without hemolytic activity was purified from skin secretions of rana ridibunda by multisteps cation-exchange fplc, revers...

We characterized the expression of a putative toxin of Bacillus anthracis, a member of the cholesterol-dependent cytolysin (CDC) family, which includes listeriolysin O, perfringolysin O, and streptolysin O. We named this cytotoxin anthrolysin O (ALO). Although B. anthracis expresses minimal hemolytic activity in clinical settings, we show that Sterne strain 7702 expresses hemolytic activity whe...

The humoral fluid of Branchiostoma belcheri tsingtauense was examined for the presence of complement-like activity. The humoral fluid showed hemolytic activity for rabbit erythrocytes and those from species representing mammals, birds, amphibians and fish, but not sensitized sheep erythrocytes. There was no relationship between phylogeny of the target erythrocytes and degree of hemolysis. The h...

Recently, we observed that Staphylococcus aureus strains newly isolated from patients had twofold-higher aconitase activity than a strain passaged extensively in vitro, leading us to hypothesize that aconitase specific activity decreases over time during in vitro passage. To test this hypothesis, a strain recovered from a patient with toxic shock syndrome was serially passaged for 6 weeks, and ...

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the in vitro activity and concentration of Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumolysin correlated to the pathogenesis of S. pneumoniae endophthalmitis. Five S. pneumoniae clinical endophthalmitis strains were grown in media to similar optical densities (OD), and extracellular milieu was tested for pneumolysin activity by hemolysis of rabbit red blood ...

The effect of new lysosomotropic compounds on red blood cell hemolysis and erythrocyte membrane fluidity has been investigated. In earlier studies it was shown that the compounds inhibit the growth of yeast and plasma membrane H(+)-ATPase activity. The study was performed with eight aminoethyl esters of lauric acid variously substituted at nitrogen atom. Esters of dodecanoic acid were chosen fo...