Water Safety Plan, Monochloramine Disinfection and Extensive Environmental Sampling Effectively Control and Other Waterborne Pathogens in Nosocomial Settings: The Ten-Year Experience of an Italian Hospital.

contamination control is crucial in healthcare settings where patients suffer an increased risk of disease and fatal outcome. To ensure an effective management of this health hazard, the accurate application of a hospital-specific Water Safety Plan (WSP), the choice of a suitable water disinfection system and an extensive monitoring program are required. Here, the ten-year experience of an Italian hospital is reported: since its commissioning, Legionellosis risk management has been entrusted to a multi-disciplinary Working Group, applying the principles of the World Health Organization's WSP.

Transcriptional control of yeast ribosome biogenesis: A multifaceted role for general regulatory factors.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a group of more than 200 co-regulated genes (Ribi genes) is involved in ribosome biogenesis. This regulon has recently been shown to rely on a small set of transcriptional regulators (mainly Abf1, but also Reb1, Tbf1 and Rap1) previously referred to as general regulatory factors (GRFs) because of their widespread binding and action at many promoters and other specialized genomic regions. Intriguingly, Abf1 binding to Ribi genes is differentially modulated in response to distinct nutrition signaling pathways.

Abf1 and other general regulatory factors control ribosome biogenesis gene expression in budding yeast.

Ribosome biogenesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae involves a regulon of >200 genes (Ribi genes) coordinately regulated in response to nutrient availability and cellular growth rate. Two cis-acting elements called PAC and RRPE are known to mediate Ribi gene repression in response to nutritional downshift. Here, we show that most Ribi gene promoters also contain binding sites for one or more General Regulatory Factors (GRFs), most frequently Abf1 and Reb1, and that these factors are enriched in vivo at Ribi promoters.

Catalysis and Structure of Zebrafish Urate Oxidase Provide Insights into the Origin of Hyperuricemia in Hominoids.

Urate oxidase (Uox) catalyses the first reaction of oxidative uricolysis, a three-step enzymatic pathway that allows some animals to eliminate purine nitrogen through a water-soluble compound. Inactivation of the pathway in hominoids leads to elevated levels of sparingly soluble urate and puts humans at risk of hyperuricemia and gout. The uricolytic activities lost during evolution can be replaced by enzyme therapy.

Multiple roles of the general regulatory factor Abf1 in yeast ribosome biogenesis.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the large majority of the genes coding for cytoplasmic ribosomal proteins (RPs) depend on the general regulatory factor Rap1 for their transcription, but a small cohort of them relies on Abf1 regulatory activity. A recent study showed that unlike Rap1, whose association with RP gene promoters is not affected by environmental changes causing RP gene repression/reactivation, Abf1 association with both RP gene and ribosome biogenesis (Ribi) gene promoters dynamically responds to changes in growth conditions. This observation changes the paradigm of general regulatory factors as relatively static DNA-binding proteins constitutively bound to highly active promoters, and point to Abf1, which binds hundreds of non-RPG promoters within the yeast genome, as a possible key regulatory switch in nutrient- and stress-dependent transcriptional modulation.

Promoter architecture and transcriptional regulation of Abf1-dependent ribosomal protein genes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, ribosomal protein gene (RPG) promoters display binding sites for either Rap1 or Abf1 transcription factors. Unlike Rap1-associated promoters, the small cohort of Abf1-dependent RPGs (Abf1-RPGs) has not been extensively investigated. We show that RPL3, RPL4B, RPP1A, RPS22B and RPS28A/B share a common promoter architecture, with an Abf1 site upstream of a conserved element matching the sequence recognized by Fhl1, a transcription factor which together with Ifh1 orchestrates Rap1-associated RPG regulation.