Escherichia coli group 1 K antigens form a tightly associated capsule structure on the cell surface. Although the general features of the early steps in capsular polysaccharide biosynthesis have been described, little is known about the later stages that culminate in assembly of a capsular structure on the cell surface. Group 1 capsule biosynthesis gene clusters (cps) in E. coli and Klebsiella ...

Aeromonas hydrophila secretes a number of degradative enzymes and toxins into the external milieu via the type II secretory pathway or secreton. ExeA is an essential component of this system and is necessary for the localization and/or multimerization of the secretin ExeD. ExeA contains two sequence motifs characteristic of the Walker superfamily of ATPases. Previous examination of substitution...

Cell-penetrating peptides and proteins (CPPs) are important tools for the delivery of impermeable molecules into living mammalian cells. To enable these cells to internalize proteins fused to common oligohistidine affinity tags, we synthesized an artificial cell surface receptor comprising an N-alkyl derivative of 3beta-cholesterylamine linked to the metal chelator nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA). ...

Ab stract In this in tro duc tory ar ti cle to the vol ume of the South Af ri can Jour nal of Phi loso phy in trib ute of HansGeorg Gada mer, the author, first, makes a few re marks about the na ture of her me neu tics and Gadamer's views on the uni ver sal ity of the her me neu ti cal ex pe ri ence. This uni ver sal ity is, in par ticu lar, ex plained from the per spec tive of the “lin guis ti...

Automating business transactions over the Internet relies on digital signatures, a replacement of conventional handwritten signatures in paper-based processes. Although they guarantee data integrity and authenticity, digital signatures are not as convenient to users as the manuscript ones. In this paper, a methodology is proposed to produce digital signatures using off-line hand-written signatu...

Tuftelin is an acidic protein expressed at very early stages of mouse odontogenesis. It was suggested to play a role during epithelial-mesenchymal interactions, and later, when enamel formation commences, to be involved in enamel mineralization. Tuftelin was also detected in several normal soft tissues of different origins and some of their corresponding cancerous tissues. Tuftelin is expressed...

We study the relationship between l-groups, Bézout domains, and MV -algebras. Our main motivation and starting point has been the Jaffard-Ohm correspondence between Abelian l-groups and Bézout domains ¶ μ 3 ́ Bézout domains with non-zero unit radical ¶ μ 3 ́ Unital l-groups ¶ μ 3 ́ MV -algebras ©© ©© ©© © HHHHHH ——————————– and Mundici’s equivalence between Abelian unital l-groups and MV -algebras...

The OpuA system of Bacillus subtilis is a member of the substrate-binding-protein-dependent ABC transporter superfamily and serves for the uptake of the compatible solute glycine betaine under hyperosmotic growth conditions. Here, we have characterized the nucleotide-binding protein (OpuAA) of the B.subtilis OpuA transporter in vitro. OpuAA was overexpressed heterologously in Escherichia coli a...

Human calprotectin (CP) is a metal-chelating antimicrobial protein of the innate immune response. The current working model states that CP sequesters manganese and zinc from pathogens. We report the discovery that CP chelates iron and deprives bacteria of this essential nutrient. Elemental analysis of CP-treated growth medium establishes that CP reduces the concentrations of manganese, iron and...

A significant role of zinc-binding motifs on metal mobility in Escherichia coli was explored using a chimeric metal-binding green fluorescent protein (GFP) as an intracellular zinc indicator. Investigation was initiated by co-transformation and co-expression of two chimeric genes encoding the chimeric GFP carrying hexahistidine (His6GFP) and the zinc-binding motif fused to outer membrane protei...