| 1. |
- Clementi, Emily A., et al.
(författare)
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A Complex of Equine Lysozyme and Oleic Acid with Bactericidal Activity against Streptococcus pneumoniae
- 2013
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science. - 1932-6203. ; 8:11, s. Article Number: UNSP e80649-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- HAMLET and ELOA are complexes consisting of oleic acid and two homologous, yet functionally different, proteins with cytotoxic activities against mammalian cells, with HAMLET showing higher tumor cells specificity, possibly due to the difference in propensity for oleic acid binding, as HAMLET binds 5-8 oleic acid molecules per protein molecule and ELOA binds 11-48 oleic acids. HAMLET has been shown to possess bactericidal activity against a number of bacterial species, particularly those with a respiratory tropism, with Streptococcus pneumoniae displaying the greatest degree of sensitivity. We show here that ELOA also displays bactericidal activity against pneumococci, which at lower concentrations shows mechanistic similarities to HAMLET's bactericidal activity. ELOA binds to S. pneumoniae and causes perturbations of the plasma membrane, including depolarization and subsequent rupture, and activates an influx of calcium into the cells. Selective inhibition of calcium channels and sodium/calcium exchange activity significantly diminished ELOA's bactericidal activity, similar to what we have observed with HAMLET. Finally, ELOA-induced death was also accompanied by DNA fragmentation into high molecular weight fragments - an apoptosis-like morphological phenotype that is seen during HAMLET-induced death. Thus, in contrast to different mechanisms of eukaryote cell death induced by ELOA and HAMLET, these complexes are characterized by rather similar activities towards bacteria. Although the majority of these events could be mimicked using oleic acid alone, the concentrations of oleic acid required were significantly higher than those present in the ELOA complex, and for some assays, the results were not identical between oleic acid alone and the ELOA complex. This indicates that the lipid, as a common denominator in both complexes, is an important component for the complexes' bactericidal activities, while the proteins are required both to solubilize and/or present the lipid at the bacterial membrane and likely to confer other and separate functions during the bacterial death.
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| 2. |
- Ehlers, Ina, et al.
(författare)
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Detecting long-term metabolic shifts using isotopomers : CO2-driven suppression of photorespiration in C-3 plants over the 20th century
- 2015
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 112:51, s. 15585-15590
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Terrestrial vegetation currently absorbs approximately a third of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, mitigating the rise of atmospheric CO2. However, terrestrial net primary production is highly sensitive to atmospheric CO2 levels and associated climatic changes. In C-3 plants, which dominate terrestrial vegetation, net photosynthesis depends on the ratio between photorespiration and gross photosynthesis. This metabolic flux ratio depends strongly on CO2 levels, but changes in this ratio over the past CO2 rise have not been analyzed experimentally. Combining CO2 manipulation experiments and deuterium NMR, we first establish that the intramolecular deuterium distribution (deuterium isotopomers) of photosynthetic C-3 glucose contains a signal of the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio. By tracing this isotopomer signal in herbarium samples of natural C-3 vascular plant species, crops, and a Sphagnum moss species, we detect a consistent reduction in the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio in response to the similar to 100-ppm CO2 increase between similar to 1900 and 2013. No difference was detected in the isotopomer trends between beet sugar samples covering the 20th century and CO2 manipulation experiments, suggesting that photosynthetic metabolism in sugar beet has not acclimated to increasing CO2 over >100 y. This provides observational evidence that the reduction of the photorespiration/photosynthesis ratio was ca. 25%. The Sphagnum results are consistent with the observed positive correlations between peat accumulation rates and photosynthetic rates over the Northern Hemisphere. Our results establish that isotopomers of plant archives contain metabolic information covering centuries. Our data provide direct quantitative information on the "CO2 fertilization" effect over decades, thus addressing a major uncertainty in Earth system models.
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| 3. |
- Segura, Javier, et al.
(författare)
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Boreal tree species affect soil organic matter composition and saprotrophic mineralization rates
- 2019
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Ingår i: Plant and Soil. - : Springer. - 0032-079X .- 1573-5036. ; 441:1-2, s. 173-190
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aims: To investigate how different tree species affect the composition of SOM and its mineralization in boreal forest ecosystems.Methods: We used pyrolysis GC-MS for molecular-level characterization of the SOM formed under five common boreal tree species at a replicated field experiment similar to 50years after plantation. We incubated soil samples at 4, 9, 14 and 19 degrees C and measured inherent CO2 production and substrate-induced respiration. We then evaluated if the saprotrophic microbial activity and its temperature sensitivity was controlled by the SOM composition.Results: The molecular composition of the SOM emerged as key factor influencing SOM properties in plots with different tree species. Most of the variance in the SOM content was explained by the organo-chemical composition of the SOM. More importantly, the fraction of the microbial community able to utilize the native SOM was largely controlled by the SOM organo-chemical composition. Temperature sensitivity of CO2 production (Q(10)) was not explained by SOM composition. However, the microbial access to different SOM pools varied with temperature.Conclusions: These results bridge the gap between the paradigms of short-term litter and long-term SOM decomposition showing that, on an intermediate timescale (similar to 50 years), boreal tree species affect SOM molecular composition and saprotrophic mineralization rates.
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