1,328 results match your criteria: "Max-Planck Institute for terrestrial Microbiology[Affiliation]"

A set of closely related methyltransferases for site-specific tailoring of anthraquinone pigments.

Structure

May 2023

Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Natural Sciences, Department of Bioscience, Center for Protein Assemblies, Chair of Biochemistry, Ernst-Otto-Fischer-Str. 8, 85748 Garching, Germany. Electronic address:

Modification of the polyketide anthraquinone AQ-256 in the entomopathogenic Photorhabdus luminescens involves several O-methylations, but the biosynthetic gene cluster antA-I lacks corresponding tailoring enzymes. We here describe the identification of five putative, highly homologous O-methyltransferases encoded in the genome of P. luminescens.

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Neural stem and progenitor cell (NSPC) transplants provide neuroprotection in models of acute brain injury, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Here, we provide evidence that caspase-dependent apoptotic cell death of NSPCs is required for sending survival signals to the injured brain. The secretome of dying NSPCs contains heat-stable proteins, which protect neurons against glutamate-induced toxicity and trophic factor withdrawal in vitro, and from ischemic brain damage in vivo.

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At the Crossroad of Nucleotide Dynamics and Protein Synthesis in Bacteria.

Microbiol Mol Biol Rev

March 2023

Schmid College of Science and Technology, Chapman University, Orange, California, USA.

Nucleotides are at the heart of the most essential biological processes in the cell, be it as key protagonists in the dogma of molecular biology or by regulating multiple metabolic pathways. The dynamic nature of nucleotides, the cross talk between them, and their constant feedback to and from the cell's metabolic state position them as a hallmark of adaption toward environmental and growth challenges. It has become increasingly clear how the activity of RNA polymerase, the synthesis and maintenance of tRNAs, mRNA translation at all stages, and the biogenesis and assembly of ribosomes are fine-tuned by the pools of intracellular nucleotides.

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The study describes the effect of aerobic conditions on the proteome of homofermentative lactic acid bacterium CM MSU 529 grown in a batch culture. Aeration caused the induction of the biosynthesis of 43 proteins, while 14 proteins were downregulated as detected by label-free LC-MS/MS. Upregulated proteins are involved in oxygen consumption (Pox, LctO, pyridoxine 5'-phosphate oxidase), xylulose 5-phosphate conversion (Xfp), pyruvate metabolism (PdhD, AlsS, AlsD), reactive oxygen species (ROS) elimination (Tpx, TrxA, Npr), general stress response (GroES, PfpI, universal stress protein, YqiG), antioxidant production (CysK, DkgA), pyrimidine metabolism (CarA, CarB, PyrE, PyrC, PyrB, PyrR), oligopeptide transport and metabolism (OppA, PepO), and maturation and stability of ribosomal subunits (RbfA, VicX).

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Phytochromes are linear tetrapyrrole-binding photoreceptors in eukaryotes and bacteria, primarily responding to red and far-red light signals reversibly. Among the GAF domain-based phytochrome superfamily, cyanobacteria-specific cyanobacteriochromes show various optical properties covering the entire visible region. It is unknown what physiological demands drove the evolution of cyanobacteriochromes in cyanobacteria.

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MerA functions as a hypothiocyanous acid reductase and defense mechanism in Staphylococcus aureus.

Mol Microbiol

April 2023

Centre for Free Radical Research, Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, University of Otago Christchurch, Christchurch, New Zealand.

The major pathogen Staphylococcus aureus has to cope with host-derived oxidative stress to cause infections in humans. Here, we report that S. aureus tolerates high concentrations of hypothiocyanous acid (HOSCN), a key antimicrobial oxidant produced in the respiratory tract.

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The attachment of bacteria onto a surface, consequent signaling, and the accumulation and growth of the surface-bound bacterial population are key initial steps in the formation of pathogenic biofilms. While recent reports have hinted that the stiffness of a surface may affect the accumulation of bacteria on that surface, the processes that underlie bacterial perception of and response to surface stiffness are unknown. Furthermore, whether, and how, the surface stiffness impacts biofilm development, after initial accumulation, is not known.

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Implementation of the β-hydroxyaspartate cycle increases growth performance of Pseudomonas putida on the PET monomer ethylene glycol.

Metab Eng

March 2023

Department of Biochemistry & Synthetic Metabolism, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Karl-von-Frisch-Str. 10, 35043 Marburg, Germany; LOEWE-Center for Synthetic Microbiology, Philipps-University Marburg, Karl-von-Frisch-Str. 8, 35043 Marburg, Germany. Electronic address:

Ethylene glycol (EG) is a promising next generation feedstock for bioprocesses. It is a key component of the ubiquitous plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and other polyester fibers and plastics, used in antifreeze formulations, and can also be generated by electrochemical conversion of syngas, which makes EG a key compound in a circular bioeconomy. The majority of biotechnologically relevant bacteria assimilate EG via the glycerate pathway, a wasteful metabolic route that releases CO and requires reducing equivalents as well as ATP.

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The key to ensuring proper chromosome segregation during mitosis is the kinetochore (KT), a tightly regulated multiprotein complex that links the centromeric chromatin to the spindle microtubules and as such leads the segregation process. Understanding its architecture, function, and regulation is therefore essential. However, due to its complexity and dynamics, only its individual subcomplexes could be studied in structural detail so far.

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Enzymatic carbon dioxide fixation is one of the most important metabolic reactions as it allows the capture of inorganic carbon from the atmosphere and its conversion into organic biomass. However, due to the often unfavorable thermodynamics and the difficulties associated with the utilization of CO, a gaseous substrate that is found in comparatively low concentrations in the atmosphere, such reactions remain challenging for biotechnological applications. Nature has tackled these problems by evolution of dedicated CO-fixing enzymes, i.

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Bacteria communicate and coordinate their behaviour at the intra- and interspecies levels by producing and sensing diverse extracellular small molecules called autoinducers. Autoinducer 2 (AI-2) is produced and detected by a variety of bacteria and thus plays an important role in interspecies communication and chemotaxis. Although AI-2 is a major autoinducer molecule present in the mammalian gut and can influence the composition of the murine gut microbiota, its role in bacteria-bacteria and bacteria-host interactions during gut colonization remains unclear.

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Crop diseases caused by pathogens critically affect global food security and plant ecology. Pathogens are well adapted to their host plants and have developed sophisticated mechanisms allowing successful colonization. Plants in turn have taken measures to counteract pathogen attacks resulting in an evolutionary arms race.

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Background: Over the 70 years since the introduction of plastic into everyday items, plastic waste has become an increasing problem. With over 360 million tonnes of plastics produced every year, solutions for plastic recycling and plastic waste reduction are sorely needed. Recently, multiple enzymes capable of degrading PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic have been identified and engineered.

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Mutualistic exchange of metabolites can play an important role in microbial communities. Under natural environmental conditions, such exchange may be compromised by the dispersal of metabolites and by the presence of non-cooperating microorganisms. Spatial proximity between members during sessile growth on solid surfaces has been shown to promote stabilization of cross-feeding communities against these challenges.

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MINFLUX imaging of a bacterial molecular machine at nanometer resolution.

Methods Appl Fluoresc

December 2022

Institute of Medical Microbiology, Virology and Hygiene, University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20251 Hamburg, Germany.

The resolution achievable with the established super-resolution fluorescence nanoscopy methods, such as STORM or STED, is in general not sufficient to resolve protein complexes or even individual proteins. Recently, minimal photon flux (MINFLUX) nanoscopy has been introduced that combines the strengths of STED and STORM nanoscopy and can achieve a localization precision of less than 5 nm. We established a generally applicable workflow for MINFLUX imaging and applied it for the first time to a bacterial molecular machine, i.

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Protein Ser/Thr kinases are posttranslational regulators of key molecular processes in bacteria, such as cell division and antibiotic tolerance. Here, we characterize the E. coli toxin YjjJ (HipH), a putative protein kinase annotated as a member of the family of HipA-like Ser/Thr kinases, which are involved in antibiotic tolerance.

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Rhabdopeptide/xenortide-like peptide (RXP) nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) derived from entomophathogenic and bacteria often produce libraries of different peptides varying in amino acid composition, number and degree of methylation, which mainly is a result of promiscuous docking domains (DDs) mediating protein-protein interactions between the different NRPS subunits. In this study, we present two specific RXP-NRPS systems with rather specific DDs that were used as platforms to generate a series of defined RXPs via the exchange of adenylation/methyltransferase (A-MT) domains in the systems followed by heterologous expression in . Additionally, these results suggest that NRPS subunit interaction is not only exclusively dependent on DDs but at least partially also on A domains.

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Structural Basis for a Cork-Up Mechanism of the Intra-Molecular Mesaconyl-CoA Transferase.

Biochemistry

January 2023

Department of Biochemistry & Synthetic Metabolism, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Karl-von-Frisch Straße 10, 35043 Marburg, Germany.

Article Synopsis
  • Mesaconyl-CoA transferase (Mct) is crucial for the 3-hydroxypropionate bi-cycle, facilitating rapid intra-molecular CoA transfers involving mesaconate without releasing free CoA.
  • Mct performs these intra-molecular transfers at efficiencies over 10 million per second, which is dramatically quicker—over 6 orders of magnitude—than inter-molecular transfers.
  • Structure analysis of Mct reveals that its central cavity remains sealed during reactions, promoting the intra-molecular transfer mechanism, contrasting with other family III/Frc CoA transferases that have dynamic opening and closing cycles.
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The spatiotemporal regulation of cell division is a fundamental issue in cell biology. Bacteria have evolved a variety of different systems to achieve proper division site placement. In many cases, the underlying molecular mechanisms are still incompletely understood.

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Anaplerosis is an essential feature of metabolism that allows the continuous operation of natural metabolic networks, such as the citric acid cycle, by constantly replenishing drained intermediates. However, this concept has not been applied to synthetic in vitro metabolic networks, thus far. Here we used anaplerotic strategies to directly access the core sequence of the CETCH cycle, a new-to-nature in vitro CO-fixation pathway that features several C-C biosynthetic precursors.

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Inside prokaryotic cells, passive translational diffusion typically limits the rates with which cytoplasmic proteins can reach their locations. Diffusion is thus fundamental to most cellular processes, but the understanding of protein mobility in the highly crowded and non-homogeneous environment of a bacterial cell is still limited. Here, we investigated the mobility of a large set of proteins in the cytoplasm of , by employing fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) combined with simulations and theoretical modeling.

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A critical step in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) biogenesis involves flipping lipooligosaccharide, an LPS precursor, from the cytoplasmic to the periplasmic leaflet of the inner membrane, an operation carried out by the ATP-binding cassette transporter MsbA. Although LPS binding to the inner cavity of MsbA is well established, the selectivity of MsbA-lipid interactions at other site(s) remains poorly understood. Here we use native mass spectrometry (MS) to characterize MsbA-lipid interactions and guide structural studies.

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Bacteriophages are highly abundant viruses of bacteria. The major role of phages in shaping bacterial communities and their emerging medical potential as antibacterial agents has triggered a rebirth of phage research. To understand the molecular mechanisms by which phages hijack their host, omics technologies can provide novel insights into the organization of transcriptional and translational events occurring during the infection process.

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Impact of innovative nanoadditives on biodigesters microbiome.

Microb Biotechnol

January 2023

Energy Materials Laboratory, Physics Department, School of Sciences and Engineering, The American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt.

Nanoparticles (NPs) supplementation to biodigesters improves the digestibility of biowaste and the generation of biogas. This study investigates the impact of innovative nanoadditives on the microbiome of biodigesters. Fresh cow manure was anaerobically incubated in a water bath under mesophilic conditions for 30 days.

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