Let LuxS speak up in AI-2 signaling

Time to let the patient speak.

"Listen to the complaint of the patient, however tiresome or irrelevant that may seem. He will eventually tell you what is the matter with him.... It is usually better in terms ofboth care and time to allow the flow to come to a natural halt from exhaustion of either the speaker or the material." The first half of this advice (from an experienced advocate and judge in medicolegal cases and a he...

Identification of a Key Amino Acid of LuxS Involved in AI-2 Production in Campylobacter jejuni

Autoinducer-2 (AI-2) mediated quorum sensing has been associated with the expression of virulence factors in a number of pathogenic organisms and has been demonstrated to play a role in motility and cytolethal distending toxin (cdt) production in Campylobacter jejuni. We have initiated the work to determine the molecular basis of AI-2 synthesis and the biological functions of quorum sensing in ...

Silent Synapses Speak Up

*Department of Psychiatry The existence of silent or ineffective synapses in the †Department of Cellular and Molecular spinal cordwas proposed over 20 years ago (Wall, 1977), Pharmacology based on experimentally induced rapid changes in the Department of Physiology ability of afferents to evoke single unit activity. However, University of California a limitation of this approach was that it was...

Silent clusters – speak up!

Microorganisms have provided mankind with a multitude of useful compounds ranging from industrial enzymes to anti-cancer compounds and antibiotics. With the aging population, our need for treatment principles against cancer, Alzheimer's disease and metabolic disorders is increasing. Also, the occurrence and spread of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic microorganisms has become one of our main ...

Let the data speak: a response to Terracciano (2014).