Bacteria molecular properties

D.W. Kraus and J.B. Wittenberg, Hemoglobins of the Lucina pectinata bacteria symbiosis I. Molecular properties, kinetics, and equilibria of reactions with ligands. J. Biol. Chem. 265, 16043—16053 (1990). 

The immune system protects humans and animals from microbial infections by such infectious agents as bacteria, yeasts and fungi, viruses and protozoa. These differ greatly not only in their size but in their structural and molecular properties, as well as in the ways in which they seek to infect our bodies. Some of these pathogens infect bodily fluids, some penetrate tissues and some even survive and multiply within individual host cells. These intracellular pathogens include viruses, some parasitic protozoa (such as Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria, which infects erythrocytes) and... 

In Aspen Plus, solid components are identified as different types. Pure materials with measurable properties such as molecular weight, vapor pressure, and critical temperature and pressure are known as conventional solids and are present in the MIXED substream with other pure components. They can participate in any of the phase or reaction equilibria specified in any unit operation. If the solid phase participates only in reaction equilibrium but not in phase equilibrium (for example, when the solubility in the fluid phase is known to be very low), then it is called a conventional inert solid and is listed in a substream CISOLID. If a solid is not involved in either phase or reaction equilibrium, then it is a nonconventional solid and is assigned to substream NC. Nonconventional solids are defined by attributes rather than molecular properties and can be used for coal, cells, catalysts, bacteria, wood pulp, and other multicomponent solid materials. 

Virtually all bacterial species and genera express lectins or lectin-like activities, frequently of more than one type and with different specificities. However, it is usually not known whether individual cells coexpress multiple types of lectin or each lectin is confined to a distinct cell population. Many Gram negative bacteria (for example, Escherichia coli and Salmonellae spp.) and a few Gram positive ones (e.g. certain actinomyces), produce surface lectins that are often in the form of submicroscopic hairlike appendages known as fimbriae (pili) that protrude from the surface of the cells. The best characterized bacterial surface lectins with respect to their molecular properties, carbohydrate specificity and genetics are the type 1 fimbriae specific for mannose and the type P fimbriae specific for galabiose, [Gal(al-4)Gal], produced by many strains of E. coli. Other examples are S fimbriae of E. coli, specific for NeuAc(a2-3)Gal, and type 2... 

The archaea were only recognized as a distinct group of organisms in 1977 when Carl Woese analyzed specific nucleic acid molecules. Comparison of the molecular properties of archeans to those of bacteria and eukaryotes has revealed that archeans are in many ways closer to the eukaryotes than to the outwardly similar bacteria. For example, the archean system for synthesizing protein is more like that of eukaryotes. 

Because of the importance of DNA synthesis, the properties of DNA polymerases prepared from various sources have now been reported. A number of enzymes, all exhibiting different molecular properties, have been purified from viral, bacterial, and mammalian sources. Certainly in the future the knowledge of the special properties of a battery of polymerases will permit their use as tools in the study of the mechanisms of DNA synthesis in both bacteria and mammals and will also provide the means for studying DNA sequence. It is, however, impossible to catalog all the properties of the polymerases that have been purified and only a few critical points will be made here. 

Another source of rubredoxins was found in an aerobic bacterium, Pseudomonas oleovorans, utilizing n-hexane as a carbon source (10). This particular rubredoxin differs from those commonly found in anaerobic bacteria in some of its properties it has a molecular weight of 19,000, and one iron form of the protein is readily converted to a two-iron form (11). The rubredoxin of P. oleovorans functions as a terminal electron transfer component in an enzyme system which participates in the ( -hydroxylation of fatty acids and hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbon-oxidizing... 

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