Investigations of air pollution were carried out in Trbovlje, Zagorje and Hrastnik, three towns in the Zasavje urban region in Slovenia with its dense industry. This region has a typical geographic location in small, closed side valleys of the Sava river. Special pumps were equipped with a Nucleopore-Costar polycarbonate membrane filters (pore size 0.4 ĵ m) to determine cadmium and lead in resp...

Actinoporins are potent pore-forming toxins produced by sea anemones. They readily form pores in membranes that contain sphingomyelin. Molecular mechanism of pore formation involves recognition of membrane sphingomyelin, firm binding to the membrane accompanied by the transfer of the N-terminal region to the lipid-water interface and oligomerization of three to four monomers with accompanying p...

The geochemical composition of sediment pore water was investigated in comparison with the composition of sediment particles and surface water in an estuary within one of the most industrialized areas in Latin America (Santos-Cubatão estuarine system, SE Brazil). Pore and surface waters presented anomalously high levels of F(-), NH4(+), Fe, Mn and P due to two industrial point sources. In the s...

BACKGROUND/AIM Cholesterol-dependent cytolysins (CDCs) are pore-forming toxins from Gram-positive bacteria. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential of a CDC, intermedilysin, as a drug-delivery system (DDS) for clinical application. MATERIALS AND METHODS Intermedilysin was modified by the addition of a disulfide bridge to regulate pore formation, by swapping domain 4 to provide ...

The swath bathymetric data acquired during the “Sumatra Aftershocks” cruise from the Sunda trench in the Indian Ocean to the north of the Sumatra Island imaged several scars and deposits. In situ pore pressure measurements using the Ifremer piezometer and coring demonstrate that high excess pore pressure and sediment deformation was generated by a recent event in the scar of the slope failure z...

A key event in nuclear formation is the assembly of functional nuclear pores. We have used a nuclear reconstitution system derived from Xenopus eggs to examine the process of nuclear pore assembly in vitro. With this system, we have identified three reagents which interfere with nuclear pore assembly, NEM, GTP~S, and the Ca ÷+ chelator, BAPTA. These reagents have allowed us to determine that th...

cytoplasm by the nuclear envelope (NE) is critical for eukaryotic cell organization. We have discovered that nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), essential multiprotein channels that mediate molecular trafficking across the NE [1], do not turn over and are extremely long-lived in post-mitotic cells [2]. The lack of a replacement mechanism of NPCs leads to a deterioration of NPC function over time, pr...

Caspases were recently implicated in the functional impairment of the nuclear pore complex during apoptosis, affecting its dual activity as nucleocytoplasmic transport channel and permeability barrier. Concurrently, electron microscopic data indicated that nuclear pore morphology is not overtly altered in apoptotic cells, raising the question of how caspases may deactivate nuclear pore function...

Nuclear envelope (NE) formation during cell division in multicellular organisms is a central yet poorly understood biological process. We report that the conserved nucleoporin Nup155 has an essential function in NE formation in Caenorhabditis elegans embryos and in Xenopus laevis egg extracts. In vivo depletion of Nup155 led to failure of nuclear lamina formation and defects in chromosome segre...