Publications by authors named "M P Cerdeiras"

Among many sources of natural bioactive substances, mushrooms constitute a huge and mostly unexplored group. Biologically active secondary metabolites of Ganoderma, a group of wood-degrading mushrooms, have recently been reviewed. Our previous study revealed the antimicrobial activity of extracts from G.

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Despite the great advances in chemotherapeutics, infectious diseases are still one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Among some of the clinically relevant pathogens, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) ranks as one of the most difficult bacteria to treat. It is a common cause of skin, soft-tissue, and endovascular infections, as well as pneumonia, septic arthritis, endocarditis, osteomyelitis, and sepsis.

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Purine transporters as substrate entry points in organisms, are involved in a number of cellular processes such as nitrogen source uptake, energy metabolism and synthesis of nucleic acids. In this study, two nucleobase transporter genes (phZ, phU) from Phanerochaete chrysosporium were cloned, identified, and functionally characterized. Our results show that PhZ is a transporter of adenine and hypoxanthine, and a protein belonging to the AzgA-like family, whilst PhU belongs to the NAT/NCS2 family, transporting xanthine and uric acid.

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In this work, the antimicrobial activity of extracts of wood rotting higher Basidiomycetes mushrooms isolated from Eucalyptus plantations in Uruguay was studied using bacterial and fungal phytopathogens as targets. Fifty-one extracts from mycelia and growth broth were prepared from higher Basidiomycetes mushrooms, from which eight extracts (from Ganoderma resinaceum, Laetiporus sulphureus, Dictyopanus pusillus, and Bjerkandera adusta) showed antimicrobial activity against Xanthomonas vesicatoria, Aspergillus oryzae, Penicillium expansum, Botrytis cinerea, and Rhizopus stolonifer as assayed in the qualitative test. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for those fungal extracts was determined and the results showed that L.

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Fungal lectins constitute excellent ligands for development of affinity adsorbents useful in affinity chromatography. In this work, a lectin was purified from Pycnoporus sanguineus (PSL) mycelium using 3 procedures: by affinity chromatography, using magnetic galactosyl-nanoparticles or galactose coupled to Sepharose, and by ionic exchange chromatography (IEC). The highest lectin yield was achieved by IEC (55%); SDS-PAGE of PSL showed 2 bands with molecular mass of 68.

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