Staphylococcus aureus produces a wide array of virulence factors and causes a correspondingly diverse array of infections. Production of these virulence factors is under the control of a complex network of global regulatory elements, one of which is sarA. sarA encodes a DNA binding protein that is considered to function as a transcription factor capable of acting as either a repressor or an act...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of subacute ruminal acidosis (SARA) in dairy cows is high with large impact on economy and welfare. Its current field diagnosis is based on point ruminal pH measurements by oral probe or rumenocentesis. These techniques are invasive and inaccurate, and better markers for the diagnosis of SARA are needed. The goal of this study was to evaluate clinical signs of SARA and...

The impact of a long-term subacute rumen acidosis (SARA) on the bovine epimural bacterial microbiome (BEBM) and its consequences for rumen health is poorly understood. This study aimed to investigate shifts in the BEBM during a long-term transient SARA model consisting of two concentrate-diet-induced SARA challenges separated by a 1-week challenge break. Eight cows were fed forage and varying c...

OBJECTIVE To examine the usefulness of the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) in ataxic stroke patients. METHOD This was a retrospective study of 54 patients following their first ataxic stroke. The data used in the analysis comprised ambulation status on admission and scores on the SARA, the Korean version of the Modified Barthel Index (K-MBI) and the Berg Balance Scale (BB...

This article introduces the SARA-Coffee web server; a service allowing the online computation of 3D structure based multiple RNA sequence alignments. The server makes it possible to combine sequences with and without known 3D structures. Given a set of sequences SARA-Coffee outputs a multiple sequence alignment along with a reliability index for every sequence, column and aligned residue. SARA-...

The sarA locus in Staphylococcus aureus controls the expression of many virulence genes. The sarA regulatory molecule, SarA, is a 14.7-kDa protein (124 residues) that binds to the promoter region of target genes. Here we report the 2.6 A-resolution x-ray crystal structure of the dimeric winged helix SarA protein, which differs from the published SarA structure dramatically. In the crystal packi...

In S. aureus, the production of virulence determinants such as cell wall adhesins and exotoxins during the growth cycle is controlled by global regulators such as SarA and agr. Genomic scan reveals 16 two-component regulatory systems (e.g. agr and sae) as well as a family of SarA homologs in S. aureus. We call the SarA homologs the SarA protein family. Many of the members in this protein family...

Recent interest in non-coding RNA transcripts has resulted in a rapid increase of deposited RNA structures in the Protein Data Bank. However, a characterization and functional classification of the RNA structure and function space have only been partially addressed. Here, we introduce the SARA program for pair-wise alignment of RNA structures as a web server for structure-based RNA function ass...

The expression of genes involved in the pathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureus is known to be controlled by global regulatory loci, including agr, sarA, saeRS, arlRS, and sarA-like genes. As part of our continuing efforts to understand the regulatory mechanisms that involve sarA-like genes, we describe here the characterization of a novel transcriptional regulator called SarX, a member of the Sa...

The homeodomain protein TGIF has been implicated in the negative regulation of TGF-beta signaling. In this study, we report an unexpected role of TGIF in the inhibition of Smad2 phosphorylation, which occurs by a mechanism independent of its association with Smad2. This inhibitory function of TGIF is executed in concert with c-Jun, which facilitates the interaction of TGIF with cPML, resulting ...