The majority of ecotoxicological studies are performed under stable and optimal conditions, whereas in reality the complexity of the natural environment faces organisms with multiple stressors of different type and origin, which can activate pathways of response often difficult to interpret. In particular, aquatic organisms living in estuarine zones already impacted by metal contamination can b...

Azospirillum has been shown to improve coleoptile growth in seedlings growing in darkness under osmotic stress. However, the changes in water relations that may occur in this experimental system have not yet been studied. Two-centimetre long Triticum aestivum cv. Buck Pucará and Triticum durum cv. Balcarceño-INTA seedlings were inoculated with viable or autoclaved (control) Azospirillum brasile...

Plant zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) comprise a large protein family and they are mainly involved in abiotic stress tolerance. Although Arabidopsis RING/FYVE/PHD ZFP At5g62460 (AtRZFP) is found to bind to zinc, whether it is involved in abiotic stress tolerance is still unknown. In the present study, we characterized the roles of AtRZFP in response to abiotic stresses. The expression of AtRZFP was...

Escherichia coli lives in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract anaerobically at high osmolarity as well as in the soil aerobically at varying osmolarities. Adaptation to these varying environmental conditions is crucial for growth and survival of E. coli. Two-dimensional protein gels were used to visualize global time-dependent changes (10 to 60 min) in the proteome of cells responding to osmot...

The stress-induced epimutations could be inherited over generations and play important roles in plant adaption to stressful environments. Upland rice has been domesticated in water-limited environments for thousands of years and accumulated drought-induced epimutations of DNA methylation, making it epigenetically differentiated from lowland rice. To study the epigenetic differentiation between ...

Osmotic stress has been shown to regulate cytoskeletal protein expression. It is generally known that vimentin is rapidly degraded during apoptosis by multiple caspases, resulting in diverse vimentin fragments. Despite the existence of the known apoptotic vimentin fragments, we demonstrated in our study the existence of different forms of vimentin VIM I, II, III, and IV with different molecular...

HHP1 (heptahelical protein 1), a protein with a predicted seven transmembrane domain structure homologous to adiponectin receptors (AdipoRs) and membrane progestin receptors (mPRs), has been characterized. Expression of HHP1 was increased in response to abscisic acid (ABA) and salt/osmotic stress as shown by quantitative real-time PCR and HHP1 promoter-controlled GUS activity. The HHP1 T-DNA in...

By DAVID \V. \\ESTRING AND SUZANNE B. BnrrrlN T lIE HEMOLYTIC RESPONSE of erythrocytes to hypotonic stress is well known. Complex enzyme systems are required by the cell to maintam membrane integrity during exposure to hypotonic solutions. When certain of these enzymes are defective, erythrocyte osmotic fragility may be altered.3 On the other hand, the response of leukocytes to osmotic stress h...