BACKGROUND In general, biofuel production involves biomass pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification, followed by the subsequent sugar conversion to biofuel via fermentation. The crucial step in the production of biofuel from biomass is the enzymatic saccharification. Many of the commercial cellulase enzyme cocktails, such as Spezyme(®) CP (Genencor), Acellerase™ 1000 (Genencor), and Cellucla...

Bacterial contamination of gelatin is of great concern. Indeed, this animal colloid has many industrial applications, mainly in food and pharmaceutical products. In a previous study (E. De Clerck and P. De Vos, Syst. Appl. Microbiol. 25:611-618), contamination of a gelatin production process with a variety of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria was demonstrated. In this study, bacterial co...

We describe a case of pulmonary nocardiosis due to Nocardia asiatica in an immunocompent 64-year-old-female. Wadowsky-Yee-Okuda-α-ketoglutarate (WYOα) agar, a selective media for Legionella species, was useful for the detection based on the growth-inhibition of normal oral flora and growth-promotion of Nocardia species.

The α-amylases from Anoxybacillus species (ASKA and ADTA), Bacillus aquimaris (BaqA) and Geobacillus thermoleovorans (GTA, Pizzo and GtamyII) were proposed as a novel group of the α-amylase family GH13. An ASKA yielding a high percentage of maltose upon its reaction on starch was chosen as a model to study the residues responsible for the biochemical properties. Four residues from conserved seq...

A series of additives were evaluated for their effects on improving the yield and quality of DNA extracted from recalcitrant soils. Levels of possible DNA contaminants in these supplements were also assessed. Three of the additives (skim milk, casein, and RNA) were shown to be effective in improving the stable extraction of DNA from recalcitrant samples of Andosol. However, whereas skim milk ap...

SR1 is a dual-function sRNA that acts as a base-pairing regulatory RNA on the ahrC mRNA and as a peptide-encoding mRNA on the gapA operon. The SR1-encoded peptide SR1P binds GapA thereby stabilizing gapA mRNA. Under glycolytic conditions, SR1 transcription is repressed by CcpN and CcpA. A computer-based search identified 23 SR1 homologues in Bacillus, Geobacillus, Anoxybacillus and Brevibacillu...