ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since I left my country to study abroad, two years almost passed. I spend the first year at Delft, the Netherlands, for the courses studying. The second year I moved to Leuven, Belgium, for my master thesis. I had a happy life in the past two years, even though it was full of challenges. Here I would like to acknowledge a lot of people, who accompanied me and shared my happiness...

M aster, a friend told me today that I should never use the editor's copy-paste functions when programming , " said the young apprentice. " I thought the whole point of programming tools was to make our lives easier, " he continued. The Master stroked his long grey beard and pressed the busy button on his phone. This was going to be one of those long, important discussions. " Why do you think c...

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...