Cytotoxin of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a cytolytic toxin that forms a pore on the target membrane by oligomerizing into a pentamer. This toxin is produced as an inactive precursor (proCTX) and is converted to an active form by proteolytic cleavage at the C terminus. We purified proCTX to apparent homogeneity and characterized it in a comparison with the active toxin. ProCTX bound to the erythro...

Staphylococci are efficient chemical factories producing a variety of toxic products. Of the many virulence factors elaborated by these microorganisms, the alpha toxin appears to be most closely associated with tissue damage. It has been known that staphylococcal alpha toxin exerts a cytopathic effect on rabbit smooth muscle and kidney cells," mouse kidney cells,' chick embryo cells,' guinea pi...

Chemical extraction and analysis ofreaction mixtures of preparations of staphylococcal alpha toxin and human plasma ~-lipoproteln (HDL) indicated that the cholesteryl esters which form an integral part of the lipoprotein molecules were de-esterified by the toxin preparations with no apparent destruction of the cholesterol moiety° This report is the first of cholesterol esterase produced by stap...

Page e1 The Topic “Toxin-Induced Parkinson’s Disease Models’ includes articles on experimental neurotoxic chemicals models of Parkinson’s Disease (PD). The model toxicants with differing chemical structures recapitulate PD owning to their action on multiple molecular targets. These reports have provided with deeper understanding on the neurodegenerative events associated with the progressive di...

indicators of water quality. In healthy systems, they are relatively sparse, but in algal blooms their density is found to be greater by two orders of magnitude [5]. Presently, there is very little understood about the connections between environmental parameters such as sunlight, nitrogen content, pH, the presence of prey, and dinoflagellate behavior. The purpose of this project is to try to u...

Botulinum toxin (BTX) is a potent neurotoxin which blocks acetylcholine release from nerve terminals, and therefore leads to cessation of somatic motor and/or parasympathetic transmission. Recently it has been found that BTX also interferes with sensory transmission, thus, the present study was aimed at investigating the neurochemical characterization of substance P-immunoreactive (SP-IR) bladd...

One of the possible consequences of global warming in the northern hemisphere is the invasion of Arctic Tundra by woody plants, which is influenced by the chemical defense of plants against mammal browsing. In this paper, we explore the toxin-mediated plant-herbivore interaction with size structure in plants using a simplified mathematical model. The size structure of plants is important as it ...

The structure of T-2 toxin in the solid-state is limited to X-ray crystallographic studies, which lack sufficient resolution to provide direct evidence for hydrogen-bonding interactions. Furthermore, its solution-structure, despite extensive Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) studies, has provided little insight into its hydrogen-bonding behavior, thus far. Hydrogen-bonding interactions are often...