BACKGROUND Nitrilases attract increasing attention due to their utility in the mild hydrolysis of nitriles. According to activity and gene screening, filamentous fungi are a rich source of nitrilases distinct in evolution from their widely examined bacterial counterparts. However, fungal nitrilases have been less explored than the bacterial ones. Nitrilases are typically heterogeneous in their ...

The entomopathogenic fungal genus Lecanicillium Gams and Zare (formerly classified as the species Verticillium lecanii) includes that are highly pathogenic to many insect genera. In this study, we identified six Lecanicilliumspp. isolated strains (designated V1-V6) belonging L. lecanii (V1, V3 V5) attenuatum (V2, V4 V6). addition, these were used obtain new via protoplast fusion, nit mutants fo...

Genes that suppress recombination when heterozygous have been found distributed as a polymorphism in wild and laboratory populations of Neurospora crassa. Three alleles, ssE, ssS and ssC, are associated, respectively, with th the three wild types Emerson, St. Lawrence 74A and Costa Rica A. It is proposed that ss (synaptic sequence) genes modulate recombination by determining the pairing closene...

A theory is introduced to describe self-assembly of liquid crystalline AB diblock copolymers, consisting of a homopolymer (A) and a side-chain liquid crystalline polymer (B). We derive the free energy of the liquid crystalline micellar solutions and examine the equilibrium solution properties: critical micelle concentration (CMC), nematic-isotropic phase transition (NIT) of the rigid side-chain...

Three rare earth-nitronyl nitroxide radical complexes [Ln(tfa)(3)(NIT-BzImH)] (Ln(III) = Gd 1, Tb 2, Dy 3; tfa = trifluoroacetylacetonate; NIT-BzImH = 2-(2'-benzimidazolyl)-4,4,5,5-tetramethylimidazolyl-1-oxyl-3-oxide) have been successfully prepared and structurally characterized. X-Ray crystallographic analysis reveals that all three complexes are isomorphous. Their crystal structures consist...

Nitrofurantoin has been used for decades for the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs), but clinically significant resistance in Escherichia coli is uncommon. Nitrofurantoin concentrations in the gastrointestinal tract tend to be low, which might facilitate selection of nitrofurantoin-resistant (NIT-R) strains in the gut flora. We subjected two nitrofurantoin-susceptible intestinal E. co...

The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa is a long-studied eukaryotic microbial system amenable to heterologous expression of native and foreign proteins. However, relatively few highly tunable promoters have been developed for this species. In this study, we compare the tcu-1 and nit-6 promoters for controlled expression of a GFP reporter gene in N. crassa. Although the copper-regulated tcu-1 ...

The areA gene of Aspergillus nidulans encodes a GATA zinc finger transcription factor that activates the expression of a large number of genes subject to nitrogen metabolite repression. The amount and activity of the AreA protein under different nitrogen conditions is modulated by transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and post-translational controls. One of these controls of AreA activity has ...