Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is a common human pathogen and the etiologic agent of a large number of diseases ranging from mild, self-limiting infections to invasive life-threatening conditions. Two prominent virulence factors of this bacterium are the genetically and functionally linked pore-forming toxin streptolysin O (SLO) and its cotoxin NAD+-glycohydrolase (NADase). Overexpression of these to

Bubbles in DNA are involved in many important biological processes. In this work, a coarse-grained model is used for characterizing bubbles formed in DNA melting. The model resorts only to electrostatic interactions at the Debye-Hückel level, in combination with a short-ranged attractive interaction within a base pair. In spite of also omitting atomistic details, the model is able to capture exper

Composite systems where quantum dots (QDs) are combined with other nanomaterials (e.g., gold nanorods) in aqueous solutions have attracted broad attention - both for their potential in applications and for studies of fundamental processes. However, high-quality QDs are typically prepared in organic solvents, and the transfer of QDs to an aqueous phase is needed to create the desired QD composites.

Arsenate reductase (AR) in B. subtilis is encoded by the chromosomal arsC gene. Together with arsB and arsR, arsC participates in detoxification processes for the arsenate and arsenite ions. Full-length arsenate reductase without any modification has been expressed in Escherichia coli and purified in a soluble form. The recombinant protein has been crystallized at 277 K using polyethyleneglycol (P

Succinate:quinone reductases are membrane-bound enzymes that catalyze electron transfer from succinate to quinone. Some enzymes in vivo reduce ubiquinone (exergonic reaction) whereas others reduce menaquinone (endergonic reaction). The succinate:menaquinone reductases all contain two heme groups in the membrane anchor of the enzyme: a proximal heme (heme b(P)) located close to the negative side of

We have cloned an Enterococcus faecalis gene cluster, cydABCD, which when expressed in Bacillus subtilis results in a functional cytochrome bd terminal oxidase. Our results indicate that E. faecalis V583 cells have the capacity of aerobic respiration when grown in the presence of heme.

CcdA is known to be required for the synthesis of c-type cytochromes in Bacillus subtilis, but the exact function of this membrane protein is not known. We show that CcdA also plays a role in spore synthesis. The expression of ccdA and the two downstream genes yneI and yneJ was analyzed. There is a promoter for each gene, but there is only one transcription terminator, located after the yneJ gene.

Cytochromes of c-type contain covalently bound haem and in bacteria are located on the periplasmic side of the cytoplasmic membrane. More than eight different gene products have been identified as being specifically required for the synthesis of cytochromes c in Gram-negative bacteria. Corresponding genes are not found in the genome sequences of Gram-positive bacteria. Using two random mutagenesis

Heme A is a prosthetic group in many respiratory oxidases. It is synthesised from heme B (protoheme IX) with heme O as an intermediate. In Bacillus subtilis two genes required for heme A synthesis, ctaA and ctaB, have been identified. CtaB is the heme O synthase and CtaA is involved in the conversion of heme O to heme A. A ctaB paralogue, yjdK, has been identified through the B. subtilis genome se

The popularity of smartphones and the related growth of mobile application markets created a need for mobile platform owners to open their software platforms up to third party developers in order to meet user demand for mobile applications. This external innovation provides a tremendous opportunity for mobile platform owners to develop a volume and diversity of products they could not develop in-h

Platform ecosystems are becoming the locus of innovation-driven economies as technology-based platform within the ecosystem acts as the foundation for innovative product and services developed by the networked business community around that platform. At its core, a technology platform shows architectural properties, which once emerged in an industry could play as the de facto template for defining

Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) is a widely used open communication protocol between a charging station and its managing network system. The central promising idea of the OCPP is that it is an open standard, which provides a standardized communication language with the flexibility of giving charging station owners right to switch network providers at their own will. This paper investigates the o

Many organizations are adopting business intelligence and analytics systems in order to cope with the increasing digitalization of data intensive environments. In this paper, we study the role of self-service business intelligence (SSBI), a certain capability provided by a business intelligence system, in enabling organizational agility. In particular, the research question we address is as follow

A search for neutral Higgs bosons of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) and for a heavneutral Z′ boson is performed using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb- 1 from proton–proton collisions at s=13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS detector at the LHC. The heavy resonance is assumed to decay to a τ+τ- pair with at least one τ lepton decaying to final states wit

The large rate of multiple simultaneous proton–proton interactions, or pile-up, generated by the Large Hadron Collider in Run 1 required the development of many new techniques to mitigate the adverse effects of these conditions. This paper describes the methods employed in the ATLAS experiment to correct for the impact of pile-up on jet energy and jet shapes, and for the presence of spurious addit

We present measurements of the elliptic (v2), triangular (v3) and quadrangular (v4) anisotropic azimuthal flow over a wide range of pseudorapidities (−3.5

A search for W′bosons in events with one lepton (electron or muon) and missing transverse momentum is presented. The search uses 3.2 fb−1of pp collision data collected at s=13 TeV by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in 2015. The transverse mass distribution is examined and no significant excess of events above the level expected from Standard Model processes is observed. Upper limits on the W′boson