Antibiotic U-24,544, a new antibacterial agent, was found to be an effective uncoupler of phosphorylation associated with the oxidation of glutamate and succinate in rat liver mitochondria. Respiration was inhibited during glutamate oxidation but not during succinate oxidation. In a medium deficient in inorganic phosphate, the agent showed slight stimulation of mitochondrial glutamate oxidation...

This paper describes and discusses nucleic acid conformations, the energy contributions that stabilize them, and the ways the stable conformations are formed. Preferred conformations of nucleotides and of double, triple and super helices in nucleic acids are described briefly. Next the enthalpy and entropy of nucleic acid order/disorder transitions are reviewed. It is concluded that (a) the dou...

The translation of DNA sequences into synthetic products is a key requirement of our approach to evolving synthetic molecules through iterated cycles of translation, selection, and amplification. Here we report general linker and purification strategies for sequence-specific DNA-templated synthesis that collectively enable the product of a DNA-templated reaction to be isolated and to undergo su...

APOBEC3G (A3G), a host protein that inhibits HIV-1 reverse transcription and replication in the absence of Vif, displays cytidine deaminase and single-stranded (ss) nucleic acid binding activities. HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein (NC) also binds nucleic acids and has a unique property, nucleic acid chaperone activity, which is crucial for efficient reverse transcription. Here we report the interplay...

DNA is not only a repository of genetic information for life, it is also a unique polymer with remarkable properties: it associates according to well-defined rules, it can be assembled into diverse nanostructures of defined geometry, it can be evolved to bind ligands and catalyse chemical reactions and it can serve as a supramolecular scaffold to arrange chemical groups in space. However, its c...

A previous communication (Billen, 1959a) described the alteration of the killing effect of X rays on Escherichia coli resulting from prior unbalanced growth. The possibility that the treatments by which the synthesis of protein, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and ribonucleic acid (RNA) could be separated, would be reflected in altered postirradiation synthesis was next investigated. A preliminary...

Hepatitis B virus X protein (HBx) plays an important role in HBV-related hepatocarcinogenesis; however, mechanisms underlying HBx-mediated carcinogenesis remain unclear. In this study, an NMR-based metabolomics approach was applied to systematically investigate the effects of HBx on cell metabolism. EdU incorporation assay was conducted to examine the effects of HBx on DNA synthesis, an importa...

Cucumis sativus L. seeds and 5-day-old dark-grown cotyledons contain 25 and 18 S cytoplasmic ribosomal RNAs as main components. The major increase in nucleic acid content in both green and etiolated cotyledons occurs between days 5 and 7 of germination. This increase is characterized by an important synthesis of 23 and 16 S plastid (chloroplast and proplastid) ribosomal RNAs. Proplastid RNA syn...

The reverse transcriptase (RT) of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) catalyzes a series of reactions to convert single-stranded viral RNA into double-stranded DNA for host cell integration. This process requires a variety of enzymatic activities, including DNA polymerization, RNA cleavage, strand transfer, and strand displacement synthesis. We used single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy ...