Unexpected Prevalence of -Positive in the Animas River, Durango, Colorado.

Since 2014, biology students at Fort Lewis College have studied the water quality of the Animas River in Durango, Colorado. Environmental microbiology and molecular biology techniques have been employed to study isolates from the river and to define characteristics of the bacteria related to public health. was found in the river, as well as in culverts and tributary creeks that drain into the river within the Durango city limits.

The Candida albicans Kar2 protein is essential and functions during the translocation of proteins into the endoplasmic reticulum.

Since the secretory pathway is essential for Candida albicans to transition from a commensal organism to a pathogen, an understanding of how this pathway functions may be beneficial for identifying novel drug targets to prevent candidiasis. We have cloned the C. albicans KAR2 gene, which performs many roles during the translocation of proteins into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) during the first committed step of the secretory pathway in many eukaryotes.

Dependence of endoplasmic reticulum-associated degradation on the peptide binding domain and concentration of BiP.

ER-associated degradation (ERAD) removes defective and mis-folded proteins from the eukaryotic secretory pathway, but mutations in the ER lumenal Hsp70, BiP/Kar2p, compromise ERAD efficiency in yeast. Because attenuation of ERAD activates the UPR, we screened for kar2 mutants in which the unfolded protein response (UPR) was induced in order to better define how BiP facilitates ERAD. Among the kar2 mutants isolated we identified the ERAD-specific kar2-1 allele (Brodsky et al.