Growth Suppression of a Gingivitis and Skin Pathogen () by Medicinal Plant Extracts.

, newly reclassified as , is an anaerobic Gram-positive bacterium causing acne, found mainly on the skin. In addition, is responsible for inflammation of the gums (gingivitis) and blood vessels, consequently leading to various diseases in the human body. In recent years, the evolution of microorganisms, such as that have become resistant to many commercial antibiotics due to the widespread use of antimicrobial drugs in the treatment of infectious diseases has emerged as a major clinical problem.

Soluble Expression and Efficient Purification of Recombinant Class I Hydrophobin DewA.

Hydrophobins are small proteins (<20 kDa) with an amphipathic tertiary structure that are secreted by various filamentous fungi. Their amphipathic properties provide surfactant-like activity, leading to the formation of robust amphipathic layers at hydrophilic-hydrophobic interfaces, which make them useful for a wide variety of industrial fields spanning protein immobilization to surface functionalization. However, the industrial use of recombinant hydrophobins has been hampered due to low yield from inclusion bodies owing to the complicated process, including an auxiliary refolding step.

Rapid and sensitive detection of NADPH via mBFP-mediated enhancement of its fluorescence.

The reduced form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) functions as a reducing agent involved in many biosynthetic and antioxidant reactions in cells. Therefore, a lots of detection or assaying method of this cofactor are developed and used broadly in various research and application fields. These detection or assay tools, however, have often some problems, such as the low sensitivity, susceptibility to environmental interference and time-consuming pretreatment steps, remaining hurdle to successful quantification of NADPH or its derivatives accurately and immediately.

An Alternative Platform for Protein Expression Using an Innate Whole Expression Module from Metagenomic DNA.

Many integrated gene clusters beyond a single genetic element are commonly trapped as the result of promoter traps in (meta)genomic DNA libraries. Generally, a single element, which is mainly the promoter, is deduced from the resulting gene clusters and employed to construct a new expression vector. However, expression patterns of target proteins under the incorporated promoter are often inconsistent with those shown in clones harboring plasmids with gene clusters.

Cell mass-dependent expression of an anticancer protein drug by tumor-targeted .

Bacterial cancer therapy relies on the properties of certain bacterial species capable of targeting and proliferating within solid malignancies. If these bacteria could be loaded with antitumor proteins, the efficacy of this approach could be greatly increased. However, because most antitumor proteins are also toxic to normal tissue, they must be expressed by bacteria that specifically target and exclusively localize to tumor tissue.

Conditional constitutive expression system of a drug protein in vivo by positive feedback loop using an inducer-independent artificial transcription factor.

Bacterial-mediated drug delivery is a potential and promising strategy for the specific treatment of cancer with therapeutic molecules, especially with genetically encoded proteins. These proteins must be tightly regulated due to cytotoxicity and thus are usually expressed under the control of the P and TetA/TetR promoters in vivo. Since protein expression from these systems is triggered by exogenous inducer, periodic intravenous injection of inducer is necessary.

Antimicrobial and Anti-Biofilm Activities of the Methanol Extracts of Medicinal Plants against Dental Pathogens and .

Several medicinal plants are ethnomedically used in Korea as agents for treating infection, anti-inflammation, and pain relief. However, beyond typical inhibitory effects on cell growth, little is known about the potential anti-biofilm activity of these herbs, which may help to prevent cavities and maintain good oral health. This study aimed to investigate the antimicrobial and anti-biofilm activities of the methanol extracts of 37 Korean medicinal plants against dental pathogens and , which synergize their virulence so as to induce the formation of plaque biofilms in the oral cavity.

Construction of a T-vector using an esterase reporter for direct cloning of PCR products.

We constructed an efficient T vector pTQEST216T that employed an engineered esterase as an indicator for direct cloning of PCR products. After ligation of the XcmI-digested vector with PCR products, this cloning system could easily discriminate positive clones due to insertional inactivation of the esterase reporter. Additionally, PCR products were cloned into this vector efficiently without the gel purification steps, due to the well-designed multi-cloning site that was in-frame fused at the circularly permutated gap of the reporter.