Haloalkane dehalogenases catalyze the hydrolytic cleavage of carbon-halogen bonds, which is a key step in the aerobic mineralization of many environmental pollutants. One important pollutant is the toxic and anthropogenic compound 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP). Rational design was combined with saturation mutagenesis to obtain the haloalkane dehalogenase variant DhaA31, which displays an increas...

Using a combined strategy of random mutagenesis of haloalkane dehalogenase and genetic engineering of a chloropropanol-utilizing bacterium, we constructed an organism that is capable of growth on 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP). This highly toxic and recalcitrant compound is a waste product generated from the manufacture of the industrial chemical epichlorohydrin. Attempts to select and enrich bac...

Glucokinase (GK) plays a critical role for maintaining glucose homeostasis with regulating glucose uptake in liver and insulin secretion in pancreas. GK activators have been reported to decrease blood glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, clinical development of GK activators has failed due to the loss of glucose-lowering effects and increased plasma triglyceride le...

The effects of Klebsiella pneumoniae endotoxin on the biliary excretion and renal handling of rhodamine-123 were investigated in rats at different times after intraperitoneal injection (1 mg/kg of body weight). The typical substrates for P glycoprotein, i.e., cyclosporine, colchicine, and erythromycin, inhibited the biliary clearance of rhodamine-123, whereas a substrate for organic cation tran...

The countable box product of ordinals is examined in the paper for normality and paracompactness. The continuum hypothesis is used to prove that the box product of countably many a-compact ordinals is paracompact and that the box product of another class of ordinals is normal. A third class trivially has a nonnormal product Because I have found a countable box product of ordinals useful in the ...

The December 1996 issue of Development, being a separate volume of the journal, is unusual in that it is entirely dedicated to developmental studies in the zebrafish (Danio rerio). It contains original research articles documenting the results of international research efforts to identify and functionally describe genes that regulate development in zebrafish. The majority of research contributi...

Nowadays Cloud Computing has gained in importance at a remarkable pace. The key characteristic of this technology is the possibility to provide new resources to the services in an elastic way according to current demand. In contrast to Cloud Computing, Multiagent Systems are focus on other features such as autonomy, decentralization, auto-organization, etc. This study demonstrates that this fea...

Isolates of Verticillium fungicola collected in 2002 in the Veracruz State, Mexico, and previously identified as V. fungicola var. fungicola, were compared to French isolates for genetic polymorphism and diversity in some physiological traits. Results were analysed based on studies of a larger group of European V. fungicola var. fungicola. RAPD analyses showed that Mexican isolates were genetic...

It is shown that for every b > a > 0 and for every two independent identically distributed real random variables X and Y Prob[|X − Y | ≤ b] < (2db/ae − 1)Prob[|X − Y | ≤ a]. This is tight for all admissible pairs a, b. Higher dimensional extensions are also considered.

Radiation exposure to the kidney from iodine-123 orthoiodohippurate ([123I]OIH) and any associated [124I]OIH contamination may vary by a factor of several hundred depending upon the health of the kidney. Calculations of kidney dose were made for patients with the following renal states: normal, acute tubular necrosis (ATN), obstruction, and renal transplant. The dosimetry was based on a minimum...