Abstract Background Newborn ruminants possess an underdeveloped rumen which is colonized by microorganisms acquired from adult animals and the surrounding environment. This microbial transfer can be limited in dairy systems newborns are separated their dams at birth. study explores whether direct inoculation of fresh or autoclaved fluid goats to newborn kids has a beneficial effect on developme...

The structural and thermodynamic basis for carbohydrate-protein recognition is of considerable importance. NCP-1, which is a component of the Piromyces equi cellulase/hemicellulase complex, presents a provocative model for analyzing how structural and mutational changes can influence the ligand specificity of carbohydrate-binding proteins. NCP-1 contains two "family 29" carbohydrate-binding mod...

Hydrogenosomes are membrane-bounded organelles about 1 mm in size that, like mitochondria, produce ATP (Müller 1993). They compartmentalize terminal steps of anaerobic energy metabolism but, unlike mitochondria, hydrogenosomes cannot use oxygen as an electron acceptor; they reduce protons to molecular hydrogen (Embley and Martin 1998; Martin and Müller 1998; Müller 1998). Hydrogenosomes have be...

The cellulosome produced by Piromyces sp. strain E2 during growth on filter paper was purified by using an optimized cellulose-affinity method consisting of steps of EDTA washing of the cellulose-bound protein followed by elution with water. Three dominant proteins were identified in the cellulosome preparation, with molecular masses of 55, 80 and 90 kDa. Treatment of cellulose-bound cellulosom...

The ascomycetes Candida albicans, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Scheffersomyces stipitis metabolize the pentose sugar xylose very differently. S. cerevisiae fails to grow on xylose, while C. albicans can grow, and S. stipitis can both grow and ferment xylose to ethanol. However, all three species contain highly similar genes that encode potential xylose reductases and xylitol dehydrogenases requ...

Metabolic engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae for ethanol production from D-xylose, an abundant sugar in plant biomass hydrolysates, has been pursued vigorously for the past 15 years. Whereas wild-type S. cerevisiae cannot ferment D-xylose, the keto-isomer D-xylulose can be metabolised slowly. Conversion of D-xylose into D-xylulose is therefore crucial in metabolic engineering of xylose fer...