Classifying Glucokinase in Bacteria Essay

Escherichia coli, or better known as E. Coli, is one of the most commonly studied single-cell organisms because it is easier to manipulate and it is abundant. Some E. Coli strains can be pathogenic, but most are harmless. They can help benefit digestive health by filling niches in place of more harmful microorganisms. Because it is a diverse group of related microorganisms, it can be difficult to find the boundaries defining the species. Some strains are natural while others are genetically created in labs, which can be observed in aspects of an organism (Schussler).

Enzymes are types of proteins that work as a substance to help speed up a chemical reaction (Madar & Windelspecht, 104). There are three factors that help enzyme activity increase in speed. The three factors that speed up the activity of enzymes are concentration, an increase in temperature, and a preferred pH environment. Whether or not the reaction continues to move forward is not up to the enzyme, instead the reaction is dependent on a reaction’s free energy. These enzymatic reactions have reactants referred to as substrates. Enzymes do much more than create substrates; enzymes actually work with the substrate in a reaction (Madar &Windelspecht, 106). For reactions in a cell it is

Clostridia: rod-shaped, obligate anaerobes, some form endospores, produce potent toxins that cause a variety of diseases in humans. Important in medicine & industry (Botox & oral plaque). Examples of clostridia include C. tetani (cause tetanus), C. perfringens ( causes gangrene), C. botulinum ( causes botulism) and C. difficle (severe diarrhea). Microbes related to Clostridium include: Epulopiscium - a giant bacterium that can be seen without a microscope; Some clostridia are sulfate-reducing microbes – they produce H2S from elemental sulfur during anaerobic respiration; and Selenomonas – a Vibrio-shaped bacteria, live as part of the biofilm (plaque) on teeth of warm-blooded animals. Selenomonas is unusual because even though it has a typical gram-positive RNA sequence, it has a negative Gram reaction – stains pink.

Enzymes are a key aspect in our everyday life and are a key to sustaining life. They are biological catalysts that help speed up the rate of reactions. They do this by lowering the activation energy of chemical reactions (Biology Department, 2011).

Introduction In the lab, we were provided with three unknown enzymes that can potentially be identified as amylase, protease, or none of the two. The goal established for this experiment is to discover the identities of the three enzymes by conducting two specific diagnostic arrays (Ninhydrin and Benedict’s Test) upon polysaccharide and protease solutions that contain one of the three unknown solution. Through these experiments, we searched for the presence of monomers to determine if one of the three enzymes catalyzed exergonic reactions that would help indicate its identification.

Staphylococcus aureus is a gram-positive coccal bacterium that is a member of the Firmicutes, and is frequently found in the nose, respiratory tract, and on the skin. It is often positive for catalase and nitrate reduction. Although S. aureus is not always pathogenic, it is a common cause of skin infections such as abscesses, respiratory infections such as sinusitis, and food poisoning. Pathogenic strains often promote infections by producing potent protein toxins, and expressing cell-surface proteins that bind and inactivate antibodies. The emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of S. aureus such as Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) is a worldwide problem in clinical medicine.

Enzymes are an important part of all metabolic reactions in the body. They are catalytic proteins, able to increase the rate of a reaction, without being consumed in the process of doing so (Campbell 96). This allows the enzyme to be used again in another reaction. Enzymes speed up reactions by lowering the activation energy, the energy needed to break the chemical bonds between reactants allowing them to combine with other substances and form products (Campbell 100). In this experiment the enzyme used was acid phosphates (ACP), and the substrate was p-nitrophenyl phosphate.

My hypothesis was that cellular respiration and CO2 production will be higher for yeast cells grown in glucose than glycerol. The experimental data supported my hypothesis regarding carbon sources because the respiration rate and CO2 production was lower for glycerol than glucose. Yeast cells are able to use the energy from glucose directly, whereas yeast cells must go through a significant amount of work, before being able to harness the glycerol’s energy, therefore the cellular respiration and CO2 production should be higher for glucose than glycerol, which was what the data revealed.

It specifically catalyzing hydrolysis 1,4-beta-linkage between N-acetylmuramic acid and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine which are a very sturdy bond in the bacterial cell. This is where the lysozyme is targeted. In the mucous membrane, there is antimicrobial compounds such as lysozyme and secretory antibodies (IgA). Lysozyme can kill the bacteria but it less effective against the infection. Present of the lysozyme inhibit or kill the bacteria before they can colonized either in the mouth, eye or in other mucous secretion. Throughout this experiment, the lysozyme activity was determine using agarose lysoplate method. Using the sample collected the experiment was conducted within several days to see the clear zone, but the result obtained did not showed any clear zone even after added the coomassie brilliant blue stain. This may due to the plate bacteria inside the plate was dead when the sample was loadedin the well. There is possibility that bacteria was dead because the present of the bacteria in the plate cannot be seen and mybe the environment or the condition in the plate was not favourable for the bacteria to stay

Virulence Factors: The most important virulence factor of S. aureus is the specific surface proteins that allow the organism to attach to host proteins. The surface proteins of this bacterium allow it to attach to host proteins such as laminin and fibronectin, which form the extracellular matrix of epithelial and endothelial cells. S. aureus also produces a number of membrane damaging toxins that allow the organism to further invade and harm the host, of which the alpha- toxin is the most well studied and is the protein responsible for septic shock. The alpha- toxin is a protein that binds to a specific receptor in platelets and monocytes in humans, forming pores that eventually destroy the cell.

In this paper when analysed the metabolic footprinting of S. lividans TK24 wt (white), wt with a plasmid (light grey), and wt with a recombinant protein (light black) grown in a NMMP with a 5g/L of casamino acids Streptomyces lividans, and observe the uptake rate of the different aminoacids it was observed that glutamate is used as a preferential source of C and N at exponential phase. Only when it is exhausted bacteria used the carbon source that exists in the medium (mannitol or glucose ). We used the same medium to perform our experiments and the downregulation of genes related with the glutamate uptake in the agarase overproducer strains is related with the stringent response situation while in the alpha-amylase overproducer strain these were upregulated.

The pathogenesis of Streptococcus dysgalactiae is attributed to a combination of extracellular factors and properties such as adherence and biofilm formation. The aim of this work was to evaluate the influence of different factors, additives and bovine milk compounds on S. dysgalactiae biofilm formation, as the presence of the gfba gene by PCR. Additionally, extracellular DNA and the effect of DNaseI were evaluated in the biofilms yielded. Optimal biofilm development was observed when the pH was adjusted to 7.0 at 37 ºC. Additives as glucose and lactose reduced biofilm formation as bovine milk compounds tested. PCR assay showed

Bacterial toxin-antitoxin [TA] system are found throughout the prokaryotic kingdom (Cook et al. 2013; Bertram & Schuster 2014). The TA system plays a very important role in stress conditions that prevail in environments unfavorable for growth, for ex. amino acid starvation, higher/lower temperatures, pH, oxidative stress, etc. (Yamaguchi et al. 2011; Van Melderen & Saavedra De Bast 2009). TA systems are not essential for general bacterial growth. However, the bacterium continuously produces them investing a lot of energy. They are bicistronic elements that encode i) A toxin: A protein that negatively interferes with vital cellular functions in bacteria and ii) An antitoxin : A protein or an RNA molecule that keeps this toxin in check (Goeders & Van Melderen 2013). Both toxin and antitoxin are produced together however, toxin is more stable than antitoxin. Antitoxin therefore, is produced continuously to keep the effect of toxin in check (Gerdes & Maisonneuve 2012; Park et al. 2013). The toxin is known to effect bacterial functioning at variety of actions like cleaving DNA (Kunin & Ouzounis 2003; Pandey & Gerdes 2005) and RNA (Muñoz-Gómez et al. 2004; Yamaguchi & Inouye 2009), inhibition of ATP synthesis (Unoson & Wagner 2008), phosphorylation of proteins(Schumacher et al. 2009), etc.

In all areas of biology, it is easy to see that structure is related to function. This statement holds true in microbiology as well, the study of microorganisms, including bacteria. One characterizing feature of bacteria is the cell wall, which can generally (although not in all situations) be categorized into one of two categories: either Gram positive or Gram negative. Gram positive bacteria’s cell walls are composed of a large peptidoglycan layer (up to 90% of their cell wall). Within this large peptidoglycan layer, one can find techoic acids, which contribute to the maintenance of cell wall structure, and lipotechoic acids, which attach to membrane lipids. Gram positive bacteria that act as pathogens can also potentially release exotoxins, which can have very dangerous effects on humans. Gram negative bacteria, on the other hand, have a very small layer of peptidoglycan in their cell wall, which is surrounded by an outer membrane. Within the outer membrane, one can find the lipopolysaccharide layer, which is one of the most distinguishing factors of Gram-negative bacteria. It is important to note that Gram negative bacteria fail to possess techoic

Biofilms are sessile communities constituted by cells adhering to a substratum and embedded in polysaccharides, proteins and extracellular DNA [41]. Biofilms are important for survival of bacterial species in diverse environments [41]. They can directly alter cells growth rate, gene transcription and can enhance horizontal gene transfer [42]. Some drugs like fluoroquinolones and tetracycline can only kill the more metabolically active cells found in the outer layers of biofilms [43]. Biofilms in bacteria are known to resist the environmental stresses like biocidal agents, UV damage, metal toxicity and acid exposure [44]. They can have a spatiotemporal heterogeneity making them 1000 times more resistant to antibiotics [45]. Thus, there seems a significant need to develop antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as prophylactic and therapeutic agents against drug-resistant bacteria and biofilms [46]. Studies have been conducted to evaluate action of peptides against multiple bacterial species. Machine learning tools have been used to build six SVM and weka-based models trained on 80 biofilm-active AMPs and 88 QSPs [47]. The positive and negative datasets consisted of 90 AMPs and 220 unique QSPs found to be active against