Environmental activity-based protein profiling for function-driven enzyme discovery from natural communities.

Background: Microbial communities are important drivers of global biogeochemical cycles, xenobiotic detoxification, as well as organic matter decomposition. Their major metabolic role in ecosystem functioning is ensured by a unique set of enzymes, providing a tremendous yet mostly hidden enzymatic potential. Exploring this enzymatic repertoire is therefore not only relevant for a better understanding of how microorganisms function in their natural environment, and thus for ecological research, but further turns microbial communities, in particular from extreme habitats, into a valuable resource for the discovery of novel enzymes with potential applications in biotechnology.

Simplified Enzymatic Synthesis of 2-Keto-3-Deoxy-D-Gluconate from D-Gluconate Using the Gluconate Dehydratase from Thermoproteus tenax.

Many research areas, e.g., basic research but also applied fields of biotechnology, biomedicine, and diagnostics often suffer from the unavailability of metabolic compounds.

Activity-Based Protein Profiling for the Identification of Novel Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes Involved in Xylan Degradation in the Hyperthermophilic Euryarchaeon sp. Strain 2319x1E.

Activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) has so far scarcely been applied in Archaea in general and, especially, in extremophilic organisms. We herein isolated a novel strain designated sp. strain 2319x1E derived from the same enrichment culture as the recently reported sp.

Structural basis for (p)ppGpp-mediated inhibition of the GTPase RbgA.

Efficient adaptation to environmental changes is pivotal for all bacterial cells. Almost all bacterial species depend on the conserved stringent response system to prompt timely transcriptional and metabolic responses according to stress conditions and nutrient depletion. The stringent response relies on the stress-dependent synthesis of the second messenger nucleotides and alarmones (p)ppGpp, which pleiotropically target and reprogram processes that consume cellular resources, such as ribosome biogenesis.

TmoleX--a graphical user interface for TURBOMOLE.

We herein present the graphical user interface (GUI) TmoleX for the quantum chemical program package TURBOMOLE. TmoleX allows users to execute the complete workflow of a quantum chemical investigation from the initial building of a structure to the visualization of the results in a user friendly graphical front end. The purpose of TmoleX is to make TURBOMOLE easy to use and to provide a high degree of flexibility.

Single nucleotide polymorphism in 5'-flanking region reduces transcription of surfactant protein B gene in H441 cells.

Surfactant protein (SP)-B is expressed in a cell-specific manner and is essential for surfactant function and survival. Abnormal surfactant function occurs in humans and genetically engineered mice with SP-B levels well below 50% of normal. SP-B mRNA levels vary in fetal lung explants among individuals, possibly due to genetic variety.