A growing body of evidence proposes that glial cells have the potential to play a role as modulators of neuronal activity and synaptic transmission by releasing the neurotransmitter glutamate (Arague et al., 1999). We explore the spatial nature of glutamate release from astrocytes with an enzyme-linked assay system and CCD imaging technology. In the presence of glutamate, L-glutamic dehydrogena...

Elevated CO2 concentrations were found to cause early senescence during leaf development in sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) plants, probably by reducing nitrogen availability since key enzymes of nitrogen metabolism, including nitrate reductase (NR); glutamine synthetase (GS) and glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH), were affected. Elevated CO2 concentrations significantly decreased the activity of n...

Chinese milk vetch (Astragalus sinicus L.) is an important leguminous green manure that frequently suffers from seasonal drought. To improve its drought tolerance, the effects of rhizobia inoculation on tolerance and underlying physiological mechanism were investigated. Drought in combination with nitrogen assimilation, free amino acids, polyamines was investigated active nodules (AN), inactive...

In this study total of 266 fecal samples from 242 animals belonging to 113 species kept in the Poznan Zoological Garden were examined for Giardia. The cysts of Giardia were found only in five samples of feces collected from a giant toad (Bufo marinus), tamandua (Tamandua tetradactyla) and three individuals of cactus mouse (Peromyscus eremicus). Fragments of beta-giardin (bg), triose phosphate i...

Clostridium difficile has not been studied in detail in Asia, particularly Southeast Asia. We thus performed a prevalence study across four hospitals in Central Java province, Indonesia. Stool samples were collected from patients with diarrhoea and tested by enzyme immunoassay for glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and toxin A/B (C DIFF QUIK CHEK COMPLETE, TechLab). Specimens were cultured and molec...

Giardia duodenalis is one of the most prevalent enteroparasites in children. This parasite produces several clinical manifestations. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of genotypes of G. duodenalis causing infection in a region of southeastern Mexico. G. duodenalis cysts were isolated (33/429) from stool samples of children and molecular genotyping was performed by polymerase...

The structure of methanol dehydrogenase (MDH) at 0.194 nm (1.94 A) has been used to provide a model structure for part of a membrane quinoprotein glucose dehydrogenase (GDH). The basic superbarrel structure is retained, along with the tryptophandocking motifs. The active-site regions are similar, but there are important differences, the most important being that GDH lacks the novel disulphide r...

Proliferating mammalian cells use glutamine as a source of nitrogen and as a key anaplerotic source to provide metabolites to the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) for biosynthesis. Recently, mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) activation has been correlated with increased nutrient uptake and metabolism, but no molecular connection to glutaminolysis has been reported. Here, we show th...

We describe here the establishment of a cell-free transcription system for the hyperthermophilic Archaeon Pyrococcus furiosus using the cloned glutamate dehydrogenase (gdh) gene as template. The in vitro system that operated up to a temperature of 85 degrees C initiated transcription 23 bp downstream of a TATA box located 45 bp upstream of the translational start codon of gdh mRNA, at the same ...

We have examined the temperature dependence of motions in a cryosolution of the enzyme glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) and compared these with activity. Dynamic neutron scattering was performed with two instruments of different energy resolution, permitting the separate determination of the average dynamical mean square displacements on the sub-approximately 100 ps and sub-approximately 5 ns time...