We selected six tree species, Pinus massoniana Lamb., Cryptomeria fortunei Hooibr. ex Otto et Dietr., Cunninghamia lanceolata (Lamb.) Hook., Liquidambar formosana Hance, Pinus armandii Franch. and Castanopsis chinensis Hance, which are widely distributed as dominant species in the forest of southern China where acid deposition is becoming more and more serious in recent years. We investigated t...

The sensitivity of nitrifying bacteria to acidic conditions is a well-known phenomenon and generally attributed to the lack and/or toxicity of substrates (NH3 and HNO2) with decreasing pHs. In contrast, we observed strong nitrification at a pH around 4 in biofilms grown on chalk particles and investigated the following hypotheses: the presence of less acidic microenvironments and/or the existen...

Membrane-bound fatty acid desaturases perform oxygenated desaturation reactions to insert double bonds within fatty acyl chains in regioselective and stereoselective manners. The Δ9-fatty acid desaturase strictly creates the first double bond between C9 and 10 positions of most saturated substrates. As the three-dimensional structures of the bacterial membrane fatty acid desaturases are not ava...

Dental caries is a common disease all over the world, despite the fact that it can be both effectively prevented and treated. It is driven by acids produced by oral microorganisms as a consequence of their metabolism of dietary carbohydrates. Given enough acid challenge, eventually the tooth enamel barrier will be broken down, and the carious lesion will extend into underlying hard tissue, form...

Acid- and aluminum (Al)-tolerant microorganisms were isolated from tea fields, from which six strains were selected and identified as Cryptococcus humicola, Rhodotorula glutinis, Aspergillus flavus Link, Penicillium sp., Penicillium janthinellum Biourge and Trichoderma asperellum. They were tolerant to Al up to 100-200 mM and could grow at low pH, 2.5-2.2. In a glucose medium (pH 3.5) the pH of...

Cloud computing represents a different way to architect and remotely manage computing resources. One has only to establish an account with Microsoft or Amazon or Google to begin building and deploying application systems into a cloud. These systems can be, but certainly are not restricted to being simplistic. Some applications requires http services, some requires relational database or might r...

Abstract Acid sulfate soils release metal laden, acidic waters that affect the environment, buildings, and human health. In this study, 16S rRNA gene amplicons, metagenomes, metatranscriptomes all demonstrated distinct microbial communities activities in unoxidized potential acid soil, overlying transition zone, uppermost oxidized actual soil. Assembled genomes mRNA transcripts also suggested a...

Here, we report the draft genome sequence of the acid-tolerant yeast Candida zemplinina NP2, which was isolated from peach peels. This genome sequence will aid in the understanding of the organism's physiological properties as a potential producer of organic acids in acidic environments.

By screening a bacterial population from the soil in Tokyo, Japan, we isolated a boron-tolerant bacterium, strain BTM4c. Strain BTM4c grew under the boron excess conditions with 100 mM boric acid, which is generally toxic to bacteria. Molecular phylogenetic, chemotaxonomic, and physiological data showed that the strain belongs to the genus Rhodococcus, and is to be identified as Rhodococcus bai...

Naturally occurring oxygen tolerant NiFe membrane bound hydrogenases have a conserved catalytic bias towards hydrogen oxidation which limits their technological value. We present an Escherichia coli Hyd-1 amino acid exchange that apparently causes the catalytic rate of H2 production to double but does not impact the O2 tolerance.