A signal turnover system is an essential component of many genetic regulatory mechanisms. The best-known example is the ubiquitin-dependent protein degradation system that exists in many organisms. We found that Agrobacterium tumefaciens adopts a unique signal turnover system to control exiting from a quorum-sensing mode. A. tumefaciens regulates Ti plasmid conjugal transfer by a quorum-sensing...

BCL11B/CTIP2 zinc-finger transcription factor is expressed in various types of cells in many different tissues. This study showed that BCL11B is expressed in the nucleus of the outer hair cells of the mouse cochlea, degeneration of which is known to cause deafness and presbycusis or age-related hearing loss (AHL). We tested whether or not Bcl11b heterozygosity would affect AHL in mice. Analysis...

Ulva zoospores preferentially settle on N-acylhomoserine lactone (AHL) producing marine bacterial biofilms. To investigate whether AHL signal molecules also affect the success and rate of zoospore germination in addition to zoospore attraction, the epiphytic bacteria associated with mature Ulva linza were characterized and bacterial isolates representative of this community tested for the abili...

A murine monoclonal antibody against human lysozyme (AHL MoAb) was produced and tested on normal and leukemic monocytes using flow cytometry. The antibody gave a positive reactivity on normal monocytes permeabilized by saponin (82% to 98% of positive cells) and a negative reactivity on normal permeabilized neutrophils. This monocyte-specific reactivity had not been observed using a polyclonal a...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES In present study we aimed to clone the luxI gene encoding N-acyl-homoserine synthase detected in clinical isolates of Acinetobacter baumannii and study its expression in Escherichia coli transformants. MATERIALS AND METHODS Four A. baumannii hospital strains which demonstrated strong biofilm activity were selected in this investigation. The presence of luxI gene was ...

BACKGROUND LuxR-type transcription factors are typically used by bacteria to determine the population density of their own species by detecting N-acylhomoserine lactones (AHLs). However, while Escherichia and Salmonella encode a LuxR-type AHL receptor, SdiA, they cannot synthesize AHLs. In vitro, it is known that SdiA can detect AHLs produced by other bacterial species. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL ...

Algebraic High-Level (AHL) nets are a well-known modelling technique based on Petri nets with algebraic data types, which allows to model the communication structure and the data flow within one modelling framework. Transformations of AHL-nets – inspired by the theory of graph transformations – allow in addition to modify the communication structure. Moreover, high-level processes of AHL-nets c...