A recent hypothesis suggests that proteolytic activity of the micromolar and millimolar Ca2+-requiring forms of the Ca2+-dependent proteinases (mu- and m-calpain, respectively) is regulated in vivo by their association with a phosphatidylinositol-containing site on the plasma membrane followed by autolysis of the proteinases. Phosphatidylinositol association lowers the Ca2+ concentration needed...

The feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) protease is essential for virion maturation and subsequent viral replication in that it cleaves the Gag and Gag/Pol polyproteins at eight sites to release the respective structural proteins and enzymes. During purification of a recombinant FIV protease (PR), we noted that it underwent autoproteolysis (autolysis) to give discrete cleavage products. These a...

In contrast to many nanotoxicity studies where nanoparticles (NPs) are observed to be toxic or reduce viable cells in a population of bacteria, we observed that increasing concentration of TiO2 NPs increased the cell survival of Bacillus subtilis in autolysis-inducing buffer by 0.5 to 5 orders of magnitude over an 8 hour exposure. Molecular investigations revealed that TiO2 NPs prevent or delay...

The genus Leptothrix, a type of Fe/Mn-oxidizing bacteria, is characterized by its formation of an extracellular and microtubular sheath. Although almost all sheaths harvested from natural aquatic environments are hollow, a few chained bacterial cells are occasionally seen within some sheaths of young stage. We previously reported that sheaths of Leptothrix sp. strain OUMS1 cultured in artificia...

The activation mechanism through limited autolysis of a calcium-activated neutral protease (CANP) with a high sensitivity to calcium ions (pCANP) was analyzed. The rate of autolysis was dependent on pCANP concentration. The reaction was inhibited by high concentrations of digestible substrates but not by a nondigestible substrate. Incubation of pCANP inactivated by Nethylmaleimide with a small ...

Listeria monocytogenes is a foodborne pathogen capable of surviving under challenging conditions both outside and inside the host. During the transition from exponential to stationary phase it experiences a series of environmental changes that require an appropriate response to maintain cell viability. In this study the autolytic behaviour of a L. monocytogenes strain was investigated by two-di...

Autolysis is a natural event that occurs in most filamentous fungi. Such self-degradation of fungal cells becomes a predominant phenomenon in the absence of the regulator of G protein signaling FlbA in Aspergillus nidulans. Among a number of potential hydrolytic enzymes in the A. nidulans genome, the secreted endochitinase ChiB was shown to play a major role in autolysis. In this report, we inv...

Bakers' yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) cell suspensions were submitted to autolysis at various pH values (4.0, 5.5, 7.0 and 8.5) and with chemical autolysis promoters (ethyl acetate, chitosan). In one series of assays, bacterial contaminants were added at 10 CFU/ml. Autolysis yields, total nitrogen (total N) and a-amino nitrogen (a-amino N) composition as well as turbidity of the yeast extrac...

Protein recovery under sonication treatment and autolysis, also protein hydrolysis progress during enzymatic hydrolysis (using trypsin and chymotrypsin) and autolysis (using endogenous enzymes) were investigated in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Kluyveromyces marxianus. Crude protein content of dried yeast cells were 53.22% and 45.6% for S.cerevisiae and K.marxianus, respectively. After 96 hrs of...