Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of anthrax, relies on multiple virulence factors to subvert the host immune defense. Using Caenorhabditis elegans as an infection model, we screened approximately 5,000 transposon mutants of B. anthracis Sterne for decreased virulence. One of the attenuated mutants resulted in loss of expression of yceG and yceH, the last two genes in a six-gene cluster o...

Six fresh water aerobic anoxygenic phototrophs (Erythromicrobium ezovicum, strain E1; Erythromicrobium hydrolyticum, E4(1); Erythromicrobium ramosum, E5; Erythromonas ursincola, KR99; Sandaracinobacter sibiricus, RB 16-17; and Roseococcus thiosulfatophilus, RB3) possessing high level resistance to TeO₃(2-) and the ability to reduce it to elemental Te were studied to understand their interaction...

Vaults are barrel-shaped ribonucleoprotein particles that are abundant in certain tumors and multidrug resistant cancer cells. Prokaryotic relatives of the major vault protein, MVP, have not been identified. We used sequence analysis and molecular modeling to show that MVP and the toxic anion resistance protein, TelA of Rhodobacter sphaeroides strain 2.4.1, share a novel fold that consists of a...

The objective of the study was the structural analysis of the 70TeO2-5XO-10P2O5-10ZnO-5PbF2 (X = Mg, Bi2, Ti) tellurite glasses doped with ions of the rare-earth elements Er3+, based on the PALS (positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy) method of measuring positron lifetimes. Values of positron lifetimes and the corresponding intensities may be connected with the sizes and number of structu...

This letter is aiming to develop a full-color glass for the three-dimensional and three-color display. The Yb/Tm/Er codoped lead–germanate–tellurite bulk glass has been fabricated and the upconversion emissions have been investigated. The reduced blue and green emission intensity suggests that it is difficult to achieve three-color display in the multiple-rare-earth ions doped glass. Then a two...

Multimaterial optical fibers combining tellurite with chalcogenide glasses and featuring thin polymer structures are fabricated via the thermal drawing process. It is demonstrated that micrometric polyethersulfone films can be embedded within larger elongated tellurite/chalcogenide glass architectures. Taking advantage of strong chemical reactivity contrasts which exist in considered fiber geom...

In this paper we calculated, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, the cross relaxation parameter of Tm(3+) ions in tellurite glasses over a wide range of concentrations: from 0.36 mol% up to 10 mol%. A new measurement approach based on emission spectra monitoring is proposed. This method is very simple and allows to measure even very highly doped samples. The obtained values of cros...