Clostridium botulinum produces the most lethal toxins known to man, as such they are high risk terrorist threats, and alarmingly there is no approved therapeutic. We report the first cross-over small molecule inhibitor of these neurotoxins and propose a mechanism by which it may impart its inhibitory activity.

BACKGROUND Stresses like dietary restriction or various toxins increase lifespan in taxa as diverse as yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila and rats, by triggering physiological responses that also tend to delay reproduction. Food odors can reverse the effects of dietary restriction, showing that key mechanisms respond to information, not just resources. Such environmental cues can predict...

Na' channels from rat muscle plasma membrane vesicles were inserted into neutral planar phospholipid bilayers and were activated by batrachotoxin . Single channel blocking events induced by the addition of various guanidinium toxins were analyzed to derive the rates of channel-toxin association and dissociation . Blocking by tetrodotoxin, saxitoxin, and six natural saxitoxin derivatives contain...

Na+ channels from rat muscle plasma membrane vesicles were inserted into neutral planar phospholipid bilayers and were activated by batrachotoxin. Single channel blocking events induced by the addition of various guanidinium toxins were analyzed to derive the rates of channel-toxin association and dissociation. Blocking by tetrodotoxin, saxitoxin, and six natural saxitoxin derivatives containin...

Transgenic maize expressing toxins derived from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) may be commercially planted in northern China where Bt cotton has been for more than two decades. While brings additional benefits insect control, it complicates resistance management of bollworm (CBW), Helicoverpa armigera (Lepidoptera, Noctuidae), a common target and maize. Here we developed two-locus po...

designing and producing a proper fusion construction is the most important problem of producing large quantities of a properly folded functional protein. this construction should have all necessary components of a real gene. a good designed fusion gene construction could be cloned into a good and suitable host. clostridium perfringens is an important pathogen of humans and livestock and produce...

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are widely represented on mobile genetic elements as well as in bacterial chromosomes. TA systems encode a toxin and an antitoxin neutralizing it. We have characterized a homolog of the ccd TA system of the F plasmid (ccd(F)) located in the chromosomal backbone of the pathogenic O157:H7 Escherichia coli strain (ccd(O157)). The ccd(F) and the ccd(O157) systems coexis...

Kluyveromyces lactis gamma-toxin is a tRNA endonuclease that cleaves Saccharomyces cerevisiae [see text] between position 34 and position 35. All three substrate tRNAs carry a 5-methoxycarbonylmethyl-2-thiouridine (mcm(5)s(2)U) residue at position 34 (wobble position) of which the mcm(5) group is required for efficient cleavage. However, the different cleavage efficiencies of mcm(5)s(2)U(34)-co...

Venom (toxins) is an important trait evolved along the evolutionary tree of animals. Our knowledges on venoms, such as their origins and loss, the biological relevance and the coevolutionary patterns with other organisms are greatly helpful in understanding many fundamental biological questions, i.e., the environmental adaptation and survival competition, the evolution shaped development and ba...

Fusarium head blight (FHB), primarily caused by a fungal plant pathogen graminearum, is devastating disease of wheat and other cereals. FHB reduces yield, but also the quality feeding value crop. The fungus produces mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON) that poses significant threat to health domestic animals humans. In 2019 epidemic occurred not only southern eastern parts Hungary, affected area Cent...