Minerals are inorganic nutrients, usually required in small amounts from less than 1 to 2500 mg per day, depending on the mineral. As with vitamins and other essential food nutrients, mineral requirements vary with animal species. For example, humans and other vertebrates need large amounts of calcium for construction and maintenance of bone and normal function of nerves and muscles. Phosphorus...

A daunting challenge facing the water industry and regulators is how to simultaneously control microbial pathogens, residual disinfectant, and disinfection byproducts in drinking water, and to do so at an acceptable cost. Of the different pathogens, viruses are especially problematic due to their small size, high mobility, and resistance to chlorination and filtration. In the past decade, zerov...

Sulphur is an essential element that all pathogens have to absorb from their surroundings in order to grow inside their infected host. Despite its importance, the relevance of sulphur assimilation in fungal virulence is largely unexplored. Here we report a role of the bZIP transcription factor MetR in sulphur assimilation and virulence of the human pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus. The MetR regul...

ELUCIDATION OF THE FUNCTIONAL ROLE OF PCBP-THE CYTOSOLIC IRONCHAPERONE PROTEIN FAMILY, IN CELLULAR IRON HOMEOSTASISbyPOORNA SUBRAMANIANAugust 2013Advisors: Dr. Timothy Stemmler and Dr. Brian EdwardsMajor: Biochemistry and Molecular BiologyDegree: Doctor of PhilosophyBiological Role of Ferritin Iron is essential for life and often utilized as a cofactor in man...

Some problems in the basic biochemistry of monoamine oxidase (MAO) and the regulation of its concentration in tissues are considered. The substrate preferences of muscle MAO do not conform to the current distinction between A and B forms of the enzyme. Examples of this are given for skeletal and cardiac muscle. Although the enzyme concentration is low in this tissue, its relatively great mass s...

The distribution of inorganic arsenic (As) species in groundwater sample, including As(III) and As(V), requires adequate preservation to prevent the adsorption caused by precipitates of Fe oxyhydroxides. Twenty-two groundwater samples with varied As and Fe concentrations were collected from high-As catchments in Taiwan. After filtration of samples in the field, inorganic As species were immedia...

Organic molecules dominate the biological world, yet many of life’s critical molecular reactions depend on metals for catalysis. Sabeeha Merchant, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), studies how cells keep track of crucial trace nutrients like iron and copper. Her early work on Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a single-celled alga that, like all plants, pr...

1. Trypsin digestion of human serum transferrin partially saturated with iron(III)-nitrilotriacetate at pH 5.5 or pH 8.5 produces a carbohydrate-containing iron-binding fragment of mol.wt. 43000. 2. When iron(III) citrate, FeCl3, iron (III) ascorabate and (NH4)2SO4,FeSO4 are used as iron donors to saturate the protein partially, at pH8.5, proteolytic digestion yields a fragment of mol.wt. 36000...