Hydroxypyruvate reductase was purified to homogeneity from the facultative methylotroph Methylobacterium extorquens AM1. It has a molecular mass of about 71 kDa, and it consists of two identical subunits with a molecular mass of about 37 kDa. This enzyme uses both NADH (Km = 0.04 mM) and NADPH (Km = 0.06 mM) as cofactors, uses hydroxypyruvate (Km = 0.1 mM) and glyoxylate (Km = 1.5 mM) as the on...

Several modifications that have been made to the NDDO core-core interaction term and to the method of parameter optimization are described. These changes have resulted in a more complete parameter optimization, called PM6, which has, in turn, allowed 70 elements to be parameterized. The average unsigned error (AUE) between calculated and reference heats of formation for 4,492 species was 8.0 kc...

Lately, there has been great interest in performing free-energy perturbation (FEP) at the combined quantum mechanics and molecular mechanics (QM/MM) level, e.g. for enzyme reactions. Such calculations require extensive sampling of phase space, which typically is prohibitive with density-functional theory or ab initio methods. Therefore, such calculations have mostly been performed with semiempi...

In molecular simulations with fixed-charge force fields, the choice of partial atomic charges influences numerous computed physical properties, including binding free energies. Many molecular mechanics force fields specify how nonbonded parameters should be determined, but various choices are often available for how these charges are to be determined for arbitrary small molecules. Here, we comp...

The conformational analysis of ethylene-norbornene chains (E-N) has been carried out using AM1, MM2, AMBER and OPLS methods taking into consideration the possibility of binding the ethylene monomers to norbornene monomers at various positions, i.e. exo-exo, exo-endo, endo-endo. The chain that is formed by connecting exo-endo positions of the monomers has lower torsional barrier energy than thos...

Theoretical studies on anthracene and a series of its derivatives were performed using the AM1 method and DFT. Based on B3LYP/6-31G(d) optimized geometries, the electronic, IR and NMR spectra of anthracene oligomers were calculated using the Indo/Cis, AM1 and B3LYP/6-31G(d) methods, respectively. The energy gaps of the oligomers decreased and the main absorptions in the electronic spectra of th...

The gene (glyA) of Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 encoding serine hydroxymethyltransferase (SHMT), one of the key enzymes of the serine cycle for C1 assimilation, was isolated by using a synthetic oligonucleotide with a sequence based on amino acid sequence conserved in SHMTs from different sources. The amino acid sequence deduced from the gene revealed high similarity to those of known SHMTs....

The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of using temporal temperature gradient electrophoresis (TTGE) of PCR-amplified 18S rDNA fragments of different Glomus species for their detection and characterization. Screening of Glomus clarum, Glomus constrictum, Glomus coronatum, Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae and Glomus viscosum by PCR-TGGE revealed that the NS31-AM1 region of the 18...

The methylotrophic proteobacterium Methylobacterium extorquens AM1 possesses tetrahydromethanopterin (H(4)MPT)-dependent enzymes, which are otherwise specific to methanogenic and sulfate-reducing archaea and which have been suggested to be involved in formaldehyde oxidation to CO(2) in M. extorquens AM1. The distribution of H(4)MPT-dependent enzyme activities in cell extracts of methylotrophic ...