A Different Look for AB5 Toxins

Persian Carpet: A New Look From a Different Angle

The Textile Museum & The International Hajji Baba Club Washington D.C. June 19, 2004 Introduction Handmade carpet production in Iran goes back to the history, of which is not the subject of this short paper and presentation. Carpet production and in general carpet culture especially in rural areas is combined and mixed with every-day life of many people. In rural places, almost all the women...

Fast structural responses of gap junction membrane domains to AB5 toxins.

Gap junctions (GJs) represent connexin-rich membrane domains that connect interiors of adjoining cells in mammalian tissues. How fast GJs can respond to bacterial pathogens has not been known previously. Using Bessel beam plane illumination and confocal spinning disk microscopy, we found fast (~500 ms) formation of connexin-depleted regions (CDRs) inside GJ plaques between cells exposed to AB5 ...

A Different Look at Peer-Reviewing of Articles

EcxAB is a founding member of a new family of metalloprotease AB5 toxins with a hybrid cholera-like B subunit.

AB5 toxins are composed of an enzymatic A subunit that disrupts cellular function associated with a pentameric B subunit required for host cell invasion. EcxAB is an AB5 toxin isolated from clinical strains of Escherichia coli classified as part of the cholera family due to B subunit homology. Cholera-group toxins have catalytic ADP-ribosyltransferases as their A subunits, so it was surprising ...

Why do regulators of apoptosis look like bacterial toxins?

Correspondence Why do regulators of apoptosis look like bacterial toxins? Yuri Lazebnik The Bcl-2 family of proteins includes key regulators of apoptosis (reviewed in [1,2]), some of which promote cell death while others prevent it. The observation that the Bcl-2 family regulates the release of pro-apoptotic proteins from mitochondria led to the concept that members of the family control cell s...