As Selectively Induces a Disorder-to-Order Transition in the Metalloid Binding Region of the AfArsR Protein.

Arsenic is highly toxic and a significant threat to human health, but certain bacteria have developed defense mechanisms initiated by As binding to As-sensing proteins of the ArsR family. The transcriptional regulator AfArsR responds to As and Sb by coordinating the metalloids with three cysteines, located in a short sequence of the same monomer chain. Here, we characterize the binding of As and Hg to a model peptide encompassing this fragment of the protein via solution equilibrium and spectroscopic/spectrometric techniques (pH potentiometry, UV, CD, NMR, PAC, EXAFS, and ESI-MS) combined with DFT calculations and MD simulations.

Inducing α-Helicity in Peptides by Silver Coordination to Cysteine.

Short peptide sequences consisting of two cysteine residues separated by three other amino acids display complete change from random coil to α-helical secondary structure in response to addition of Ag ions. The folded CXXXC/Ag complex involves formation of multinuclear Ag species and is stable in a wide pH range from below 3 to above 8. The complex is stable through reversed-phase HPLC separation as well as towards a physiological level of chloride ions, based on far-UV circular dichroism spectroscopy.

Revisiting the hydrolysis of ampicillin catalyzed by Temoneira-1 β-lactamase, and the effect of Ni(II), Cd(II) and Hg(II).

β-Lactamases grant resistance to bacteria against β-lactam antibiotics. The active center of TEM-1 β-lactamase accommodates a Ser-Xaa-Xaa-Lys motif. TEM-1 β-lactamase is not a metalloenzyme but it possesses several putative metal ion binding sites.

First report of Coniella granati causing leaf spot of pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) in Hungary.

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.), the hystoric fruit and ornamental crop native to Iran and North India is widely planted in the Mediterranean and became popular in the house gardens of northest parts of Europe (Fernandez et al. 2014) including Hungary.

A simple molecular identification method of the (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) cryptic species complex.

The onion thrips (Thrips tabaci Lindeman, 1889) is a key pest of a wide range of crops because of its ecological attributes such as polyphagy, high reproduction rate, ability to transmit tospoviruses and resistance to insecticides. Recent studies revealed that T. tabaci is a cryptic species complex and it has three lineages (leek-associated arrhenotokous L1-biotype, leek-associated thelytokous L2-biotype and tobacco-associated arrhenotokous T-biotype), however, the adults remain indistinguishable.

Iteratively refined guide trees help improving alignment and phylogenetic inference in the mushroom family Bolbitiaceae.

Reconciling traditional classifications, morphology, and the phylogenetic relationships of brown-spored agaric mushrooms has proven difficult in many groups, due to extensive convergence in morphological features. Here, we address the monophyly of the Bolbitiaceae, a family with over 700 described species and examine the higher-level relationships within the family using a newly constructed multilocus dataset (ITS, nrLSU rDNA and EF1-alpha). We tested whether the fast-evolving Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) sequences can be accurately aligned across the family, by comparing the outcome of two iterative alignment refining approaches (an automated and a manual) and various indel-treatment strategies.

Action-sound coincidences suppress evoked responses of the human auditory cortex in EEG and MEG.

The N1 auditory ERP and its magnetic counterpart (N1[m]) are suppressed when elicited by self-induced sounds. Because the N1(m) is a correlate of auditory event detection, this N1 suppression effect is generally interpreted as a reflection of the workings of an internal forward model: The forward model captures the contingency (causal relationship) between the action and the sound, and this is used to cancel the predictable sensory reafference when the action is initiated. In this study, we demonstrated in three experiments using a novel coincidence paradigm that actual contingency between actions and sounds is not a necessary condition for N1 suppression.