Oomycetes are some of the most devastating pathogens, causing upwards of billions of dollars of damage each year to plants. They also diminish ecological diversity and health through the destruction of trees and shrubs. The genome sequence of Pseudoperonospora cubensis, an obligate plant pathogen and causative agent of downy mildew...
Standard methods of measuring fecal pollution in water do not distinguish between human and non-human sources. Molecular technology enabled the development of host-specific markers that distinguish fecal sources. Human specific PCR primers, HF183F and HF134F, were designed based on phylogenetic analyses of partial 16S rRNA gene sequences from the Bacteroidales...
Protein kinases are an abundant class of enzymes which play important roles in numerous signal transduction systems. Arabidopsis TOUSLED kinase is a serine/threonine kinase which is essential for cell-cell communication within the shoot meristem. TOUSLED is encoded by a single gene in Arabidopsis. Recessive mutants in this gene show mild...
Ribonucleotide reductase is an important enzyme in the control of
DNA replication within the cell. Ribonucleotide reductase exerts its
control through enzymatic reduction of nucleoside diphosphates. The
bacteriophage T4 enzyme is an example of the class of iron-requiring
reductases which also includes E. coli and mammalian ribonucleotide
reductases. The two...
Mutation of repetitive DNA by repeat-induced point mutation (RIP) is a process that occurs in many filamentous fungi of the Ascomycota during the sexual cycle. Concurrently, direct DNA repeats are often deleted by homologous recombination at high frequency during the sexual cycle. Thus, the processes of RIP and deletion compete...
Proteinase P-II purified from parasitized Pacific whiting muscle was previously
identified to be one form of cathepsin L. It appeared to be present in three isozymatic
forms on non-denaturing PAGE gel stained for activity. Its autolytic degradation was
observed on SDS-PAGE gel under its optimum condition, 55°C and pH 5.5,...
Clostridium perfringens is a Gram-positive, anaerobic, spore-forming bacterium that can produce as many as 17 different toxins and are responsible to cause a wide array of gastrointestinal (GI) and histotoxic diseases in humans and animals. As individual strains produce a subset of these toxins, C. perfringens strains can be classified...
Numerous human conditions would be improved if therapies to encourage tissue regeneration were available. The goal of regenerative medicine is to encourage the body's intrinsic ability to repair and restore tissues lost by disease, injury or aging. While certain vertebrates have the inherent capacity to regenerate, mammals do not. To...