The MICs of ciprofloxacin for 33 clinical isolates of K. pneumoniae resistant to extended-spectrum cephalosporins from three hospitals in Singapore ranged from 0.25 to >128 microg/ml. Nineteen of the isolates were fluoroquinolone resistant according to the NCCLS guidelines. Strains for which the ciprofloxacin MIC was >or=0.5 microg/ml harbored a mutation in DNA gyrase A (Ser83-->Tyr, Leu, or II...

   Ciprofloxacin is one of the most widely used antibiotics for the treatment of several infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, like E. coli. Changes in gyrA, encoding GyrA subunit of DNA gyrase, cause the resistance to ciprofloxacin. Some ciprofloxacin resistant gyrA mutants acquired constitutive expression of marRAB operon due to the gaining mutations in marR, a repressor of this operon...

   Ciprofloxacin is one of the most widely used antibiotics for the treatment of several infections caused by Gram-negative bacteria, like E. coli. Changes in gyrA, encoding GyrA subunit of DNA gyrase, cause the resistance to ciprofloxacin. Some ciprofloxacin resistant gyrA mutants acquired constitutive expression of marRAB operon due to the gaining mutations in marR, a repressor of this operon...

Organic solvents are extremely toxic to microbial cells even at very low concentration of 0.1% (v/v). They disrupt the bacter ial cell membrane, affecting the functional and structural integrity of the cells. However some microorganisms are known to tolerate highly toxic chemicals and hold potential for application in industrial production of toxic chemicals. Majority of the reported solvent to...

Understanding the effects of organic co-solvents on protein structure and function is pivotal to engineering enzymes for biotransformation in non-aqueous solvents. The effects of DMSO on the catalytic activity of cytochrome P450 BM3 have previously been investigated and the importance of Phe87 in its organic co-solvent tolerance was identified. To probe the DMSO inactivation mechanism and the f...

Background: Optically active ethyl (R)-2-hydroxy-4-phenylbutyrate [(R)-HPBE] is an important chiral building block for the synthesis of angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. It is reported that microbial or enzymatic reduction of ethyl 2-oxo-4-phenyl-butyrate (OPBE) is an attractive way to produce optically active (R)-HPBE. Results: The asymmetric reduction of OPBE to synthesize optic...

The thermal and solvent tolerance of enzymes is highly important for their industrial use. We show here that the enzyme lipase from Rhizopus oryzae exhibits exceptionally high thermal stability and high solvent tolerance and even increased activity in acetone when immobilized onto a graphene oxide (GO) nanosupport prepared by Staudenmaier and Brodie methods. We studied various forms of immobili...