The lysosomal degradation of ceramide is catalyzed by acid ceramidase and requires sphingolipid activator proteins (SAP) as cofactors in vivo. The aim of this study was to investigate how ceramide is hydrolyzed by acid ceramidase at the water-membrane interface in the presence of sphingolipid activator proteins in a liposomal assay system. The degradation of membrane-bound ceramide was signific...

In this study, we have explored the impact of ascorbic acid on the transcriptome of Streptococcus pneumoniae D39. The expression of several genes and operons, including the ula operon (which has been previously shown to be involved in ascorbic acid utilization), the AdcR regulon (which has been previously shown to be involved in zinc transport and virulence) and a PTS operon (which we denote he...

Though hypoxia has been implicated as a cause of inflammation, the underlying mechanism is not well understood. Folic acid has been shown to provide protection against oxidative stress and inflammation in patients with cardiovascular disease and various models approximating insult to tissue via inflammation. It has been reported that hypoxia-induced inflammation is associated with oxidative str...

The lysosomal degradation of ceramide is catalyzed by acid ceramidase and requires sphingolipid activator proteins (SAP) as cofactors in vivo. The aim of this study was to investigate how ceramide is hydrolyzed by acid ceramidase at the water-membrane interface in the presence of sphingolipid activator proteins in a liposomal assay system. The degradation of membrane-bound ceramide was signific...

Production of bio-oil or biocrude from thermochemical processes such as pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) respectively, is considered a promising path for the production alternative fuels chemicals. However, these technologies create an aqueous phase byproduct contaminated with high concentrations organic compounds. Traditional wastewater rely on biological processing which not resi...

Differentiation of derived from in vitro-incubated adult human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), isolated bone marrow, cartilage and adipose tissue, respectively, by application appropriate incubation conditions, to osteoclasts, was investigated proved. The current results show the importance changes mitochondrial dynamics about differentiation male germ (spermatogonia) mature functional activity ...

The major protein of high density lipoprotein (HDL), apolipoprotein (apo) A-I, is the major activator of the plasma enzyme lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase (LCAT). A consensus amino acid sequence has been defined for the eight, 22-residue long, tandem amphipathic helical repeats located in the carboxy-terminal region of apo A-I. A series of 22 and 44mer synthetic peptide analogues of the co...

Quorum sensing controls the luminescence of Vibrio fischeri through the transcriptional activator LuxR and the specific autoinducer signal produced by luxI. Amino acid sequences of these two genes were analyzed using bioinformatics tools. LuxI consists of 193 amino acids and appears to contain five α-helices and six ß-sheets when analyzed by SSpro8. LuxI belongs to the autoinducer synthetase fa...

Q (coenzyme Q or ubiquinone) is reported to be a cofactor obligatory for proton transport by UCPs (uncoupling proteins) in liposomes [Echtay, Winkler and Klingenberg (2000) Nature (London) 408, 609-613] and for increasing the binding of the activator retinoic acid to UCP1 [Tomás, Ledesma and Rial (2002) FEBS Lett. 526, 63-65]. In the present study, yeast ( Saccharomyces cerevisiae ) mutant stra...

Spo0A is a two-domain response regulator required for sporulation initiation in Bacillus subtilis. Studies on response regulators have focused on the activity of each domain, but very little is known about the mechanism by which the regulatory domain inhibits the activator domain. In this study, we created a single amino acid substitution in the regulatory domain, D75S, which resulted in a dram...