Bacteria Tv. nitratireducens and Tv. paradoxus from soda lakes grow optimally in sodium carbonate/NaCl brines at pH range from 9.5 to 10 and salinity from 0.5 to 1.5 M Na+. Octaheme nitrite reductases (ONRs) from haloalkaliphilic bacteria of genus Thioalkalivibrio are stable and active in a wide range of pH (up to 11) and salinity (up to 1 M NaCl). To establish adaptation mechanisms of ONRs fro...

The replicator region of composite plasmid pTAV1 of Paracoccus versutus (included in mini-replicon pTAV320) belongs to the family of repABC replicons commonly found in plasmids harbored by Agrobacterium and Rhizobium spp. The repABC replicons encode three genes clustered in an operon, which are involved in partitioning (repA and repB) and replication (repC). In order to localize the partitionin...

Thioalkalivibrio thiocyanoxidans strain ARh 2(T) is a sulfur-oxidizing bacterium isolated from haloalkaline soda lakes. It is a motile, Gram-negative member of the Gammaproteobacteria. Remarkable properties include the ability to grow on thiocyanate as the sole energy, sulfur and nitrogen source, and the capability of growth at salinities of up to 4.3 M total Na(+). This draft genome sequence c...

A novel molybdenum-free nitrate reductase was isolated from the obligate chemolithoautotrophic and facultative anaerobic, (halo)alkaliphilic sulphur-oxidizing bacterium Thioalkalivibrio nitratireducens strain ALEN 2. The enzyme was found to contain vanadium and haem c as cofactors. Its native molecular mass was determined as 195 kDa, and the enzyme consists of four identical subunits with appar...

Strain ALEN 2(T) was isolated from a mixed culture capable of complete autotrophic denitrification with thiosulfate as electron donor at pH 10; the mixed culture was enriched from sediment from Lake Fazda (Wadi Natrun, Egypt), a hypersaline alkaline lake. The isolate had large, non-motile, coccoid or barrel-shaped cells with intracellular sulfur globules. The bacterium was obligately chemolitho...

The complete amino acid sequence of versutoxin, a lethal neurotoxic polypeptide isolated from the venom of male and female funnel-web spiders of the species Atrax versutus, was determined. Sequencing was performed in a gas-phase protein sequencer by automated Edman degradation of the S-carboxymethylated toxin and fragments of it produced by reaction with CNBr. Versutoxin consisted of a single c...

A new design for microelectrode array (MEA) devices fabricated by semiconductor-processing techniques is presented. The microelectrode surfaces consist of gold and are surrounded by an insulating silicon nitride layer. Each chip of these so-called Multi MEAs contains regular arrays with circular-shaped electrodes of eight different sizes: 1, 3, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000μm. The Multi MEAs wer...