The hydrophilic fragment of hepatitis C virus (HCV) E2 protein was expressed in Escherichia coli as a chimera, bound to the choline-binding domain (C-Lyt) of the major autolysin of Streptococcus pneumoniae. The C-LytE2 chimera was purified by affinity chromatography using DEAE-Sepharose. The purified antigen was used to immunize rabbits and the specific humoral immune response to E2 protein was...

The Streptococcus mutans atlA gene encodes an autolysin required for biofilm maturation and biogenesis of a normal cell surface. We found that the capacity to form biofilms by S. mutans, one of the principal causative agents of dental caries, was dramatically impaired by growth of the organism in an aerated environment and that cells exposed to oxygen displayed marked changes in surface protein...

Antibiotic resistance and biofilm-forming capacity contribute to the success of Staphylococcus aureus as a human pathogen in both healthcare and community settings. These virulence factors do not function independently of each other and the biofilm phenotype expressed by clinical isolates of S. aureus is influenced by acquisition of the methicillin resistance gene mecA. Methicillin-sensitive S....

Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) is a major human pathogen. The main pneumococcal autolysin LytA and the pneumolysin Ply are two of the bacterium's most important virulence factors. The lytA- and ply-related genes are also found in other streptococci of the Mitis group (SMG). The precise characteristics of the lytA-related-but not the ply-related-genes of SMG and their prophages have bee...

The atlC gene (1,485 bp), encoding an autolysin which binds fibronectin, and the ica operon, involved in biofilm formation, were isolated from the chromosome of an infectious isolate of Staphylococcus caprae and sequenced. AtlC (155 kDa) is similar to the staphylococcal autolysins Atl, AtlE, Aas (48 to 72% amino acid identity) and contains a putative signal peptide of 29 amino acids and two enz...

A low-molecular-mass protein from Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) is responsible for the regulation of formaldehyde dehydrogenase activity in vitro S. Tate and H. Dalton Partial characterization of a major autolysin from Mycobacterium phlei 2. S. Li, T. 1. Beveridge, J. Betts and A. 1. Clarke Oxidation of medium-chain acyl-CoA esters by extracts of Aspergillus niger: enzymology and characteriza...

The Bacillus subtilis cell wall binding protein, CwbA, stimulated the cell wall lytic activities of the B. subtilis and B. licheniformis autolysins (CwlA and CwlM, respectively) in addition to that of the major B. subtilis autolysin (CwlB). Even though the substrate for the enzyme reaction was changed from B. subtilis cell wall containing a teichoic acid to Micrococcus luteus cell wall containi...

In the presence of penicillin, suspensions of staphylococci tend to increase greatly in density for a few hours and then undergo rapid clearing. The increase in density has been shown to be due chiefly to swelling rather than multiplication, and the rapid clearing is caused by lysis of the organisms (Chain and Duthie, 1945). This phenomenon has been observed with visual methods of comparing the...