BACKGROUND Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal cancers worldwide. No effective screening methods exist, and available treatment modalities do not effectively treat the disease. Established risk factors for pancreatic cancer, including smoking, chronic pancreatitis, obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus, collectively account for less than half of all pancreatic cancer cases. Accumulating ...

Our understanding of the degradation of organic matter will benefit from a greater appreciation for the genes encoding enzymes involved in the hydrolysis of biopolymers such as chitin, one of the most abundant polymers in nature. To isolate representative and abundant chitinase genes from uncultivated marine bacteria, we constructed libraries of genomic DNA isolated from coastal and estuarine w...

Microorganisms remain unrivalled in their ability to produce bioactive small molecules for drug development. However, the core technologies used to discover microbial natural products have not evolved significantly over the past several decades, resulting in a shortage of new drug leads. Advances in DNA-sequencing and bioinformatics technologies now make it possible to rapidly identify the clus...

A river-ecosystem is strongly affected by human activities. The pollutants discharged into a river from human activities may destroy the ecosystem of the river. Microorganisms in rivers (including suspended and sessile microorganisms) play key roles in degrading the pollutant and therefore in preventing the river ecosystem from being destroyed. To establish suitable measures for the protection ...

OBJECTIVE To study the preparation of seeding type immobilized microorganisms and their degradation characteristics on di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP). METHODS Diatomite, clinoptilolite, silk zeolite, and coal fly ash were chosen as reserved materials and modified. Their adsorption capacity and intensity in the bacteria were determined and the best carrier was picked out. The seeding type immobili...

Microbial ecology is the ecology of microorganisms; that is, the study of the relationship among microorganisms and between microorganisms and their environment. Millions of dollars and countless hours are currently spent by enthusiast scientists, microbiologists and bioinformaticians from all over the world to elucidate the characteristics and biological mechanisms behind the ecology of microo...

The ability of psychrophiles to survive and proliferate at low temperatures implies that they have overcome key barriers inherent to permanently cold environments. These challenges include: reduced enzyme activity; decreased membrane fluidity; altered transport of nutrients and waste products; decreased rates of transcription, translation and cell division; protein cold-denaturation; inappropri...

Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small scales relevant to cell swimming, tens of micrometers and below. At this scale, inertia is unimportant and the Reynolds number is small. Our emphasis is on the sim...