No description available.

The research embodied within this thesis has contributed to the development and application of a novel electrode technique. The electrodes fabricated herein consist of a thin PVC/Poly (vinylchloride) membrane which is made sensitive to a particular organic cation, for example Acridine Orange. The only requirements necessary to make an electrode were that the substance to be incorporated into the membrane be cationic, water soluble and surface active. These membrane electrodes gave an emf directly proportional to the log of the ( concentration of organic cations present in solution.

In proteomic studies, separate experimental protocols have been necessary to identify proteins, determine their function, and predict their three-dimensional structure. In this study, a function-based separation of proteins was conceived to fractionate proteins prior to enzymatic digestion. In the initial demonstration of this technique, a DNA substrate was used to separate the DNA-binding proteins from the rest of the proteins in a lysate in order to identify protein function and to simplify the complex mixture of proteins. A total of 232 putative DNA-binding proteins and over 540 proteins in all were identified from E. coli. Hypothetical or unknown proteins were found, some of which bind to DNA. As a part of this demonstration, changes in protein expression caused by different environmental conditions (aerobic and anaerobic atmospheres) were observed. In a second demonstration, aimed at determining the three-dimensional structure of the DNA binding proteins, binding sites were blocked with oligonucleotides, and the modified proteins were purified, enzymatically digested, and subjected to tandem mass spectrometry. The amino acids in the DNA-binding domains of three proteins were determined. In a final application of function-based separation, DNA-binding proteins were digested with trypsin and the resulting peptides were separated using HPLC and subsequently analyzed using MALDI TOF/TOF and ESI Q-TOF instruments to study the complementary nature of the two ionization techniques, taking into account the differences between the mass analyzers. Based on the analysis of a large data set containing hundreds of peptides and thousands of individual amino acids, some of the currently held notions regarding the ionization processes were confirmed. ESI tends to favor the analysis of hydrophobic amino acids and peptides while MALDI is disposed toward mainly basic and aromatic species. These tendencies in ionization account in large part for the complementary nature of the peptides and proteins identified by the ESI and MALDI instruments and make it necessary to employ both types of instruments to gain the most information out of a given sample in a proteomics study. / Graduation date: 2004

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Virginia Commonwealth University, 2004. / Prepared for: Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology. Bibliography: leaves 130-148. Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Biology) -- University of Dayton. / Non-Latin script record. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed 10/06/09). Advisor: Mark Nielsen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-43).

Secondary metabolism occurs after the main growth phase in Streptomyces. A 'transition phase' occurs to remodel global patterns of gene expression at the onset of physiological and developmental differentiation. Many different signals influence this transition phase, integrating, for example, information on nutritional status, growth rate, and stress responses. Several pleiotropic transcription factors that regulate the transition phase have been identified, but aspects of epigenetic control of gene expression are not well understood. This study focused on the characterisation of a novel gene sco2075 in S. coelicolor encoding a protein that combines a histone-like domain with a conserved DksA-like domain, the latter considered a ppGpp cofactor. The protein is important for integrating responses to both oxidative and osmotic stresses. The sco2075- mutant strain is sensitive to oxidative stress at least in part due to reduced induction of the alternative sigma factor sigmaR. SCO2075, similarly to E. coli DksA, may play a possible role in the liberation of core RNA polymerase to bind alternative sigma factors such as sigmaR. In addition DSCO2075 has an altered topological profile of a reporter plasmid under osmotic stress, showing little alteration in negative supercoiling when compared to the significant increase in wildtype. DSCO2075 also has a reduction in aerial hyphae and a possible reduction in actinorhodin production when grown with osmolyte. The histone-like domain of SCO2075 binds DNA non-specifically. SCO2075 expression appears to coincide with diffused FtsZ expression prior to Z-ring formation when SCO2075 appears to become nucleoid associated. Analysis of pre-spore compartment lengths showed SCO2075 is one of several nucleoid associated proteins involved in nucleoid compaction during aerial hyphal erection and sporulation. Absence of sco2075, however, does not affect the production of unigenomic spore chains. Finally, over-expression of SCO2075 suppresses defects in secondary metabolism of a relA mutant affected in ppGpp synthesis. SCO2075 could potentially be a new type of regulator, likely acting as a node to integrate stress and physiological cues by modulating DNA topology/compaction and RNA polymerase activity.

The multidrug resistance plasmid TP228 replicates at low copy number in Escherichia coli. Stable partitioning of this plasmid is mediated by three essential components: a ParA homologue, ParF; a centromere binding protein, ParG; and a centromere site, parH. ParF and ParG jointly assemble on the parH centromere forming the segrosome complex, and thereby direct intracellular plasmid transport. ParG belongs to the ribbon-helix-helix (RHH) class of dimeric DNA binding proteins. ParG specifically binds the parH site and also is a transcriptional repressor of the parFG genes. Previous studies demonstrated that unstructured N-terminal tails in ParG are not important for dimerization. Instead the tails are implicated in assembly of higher order nucleoprotein complexes essential for transcriptional repression and segrosome assembly, and also influence ParF nucleotide hydrolysis and polymerization. In this study we defined the role of residues in the RHH folded domain that are crucial for ParG dimerization and function. To achieve our goal the two α-helices, the intervening loop, and two C-terminal residues were analyzed fully by alanine scanning mutagenesis. Initially, ParG mutants were constructed and assessed for effects on normal plasmid partition activity and on dimerization. In vivo segregation assays and bacterial two-hybrid studies revealed mutation of residues F49 in α-helix 1 and W71 and L72 in α-helix 2 of ParG each resulted in defective plasmid partition activity and impaired dimerization. In vitro chemical cross-linking of purified proteins ParG-F49A, ParG-W71A and ParG-L72A demonstrated predominant monomeric species whereas wild-type ParG formed dimeric species as noted previously. Multiangle light scattering and sedimentation equilibrium analysis of the mutant proteins showed shifts in molar mass towards monomeric species with increased Kd values for dimerization. Protein-DNA interactions studied by gel retardation assays showed impaired interactions of ParG-F49A, ParG-W71A and ParG-L72A with parH. Results of conserved substitutions at position 71 showed that aromatic substitutions of W71 to Y71 or F71 are tolerated and have no apparent effects on ParG mediated plasmid segregation, but the non-aromatic W71L mutation blocked the segregation. However, a ParG double mutant bearing the ‘reversed’ amino acid pair (W71L-A52Y) retained plasmid segregation activity and behaved like wild-type ParG in dimerization assays in vitro and in vivo. Thus, substitution of W71 by tyrosine or phenylalanine does not disturb the monomer-monomer interface interactions that pack α-helix 2 from one monomer against residues of α-helix 1 and α-helix 2 of the partner monomer. Moreover, the permissible amino acid combinations at interacting positions 52 and 71 in ParG show significant flexibility and reveal key roles for these residues in function and dimerization of ParG. Overall, our in vivo and in vitro interaction studies provide novel information about the role of hydrophobic residues F49, W71 and L72 in ParG dimerization and activity. In the longer term, interference with dimerization by ParG and other centromere binding proteins using artificial ligands may provide a novel strategy for destabilization of antibiotic multiresistance plasmids.

Mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) are an important subfamily of protein kinases that are well conserved in all eukaryotes. MAPKs are the final component of a three-tiered signaling module that regulates the activation of various essential cellular responses. They activate most of their substrates through catalyzing their phosphorylation. However, emerging evidence reveals that some MAPKs also possess non-catalytic functions. In particular, the human MAPK ERK2 can bind to DNA directly and mediate gene expression. The mechanism by which ERK2 binds to DNA is still unclear. In this work, we combined structural, biophysical and biochemical methods to confirm DNA binding by ERK2 and to investigate whether ERK2’s closest plant homolog MPK4 also binds to DNA. First, we identified a possible ERK2-like DNA consensus motif in plant MAPKs. We found that several plant MAPKs, including MPK4, harbor a basic motif (KARK/R or ARR/K) in a region corresponding to the ERK2 KAR motif reported to mediate DNA binding. Next, we determined the DNA binding affinity of ERK2 and MPK4 to different DNA fragments and found that MPK4 associated directly with DNA in vitro, albeit with a significantly lower affinity than did ERK2. Moreover, we observed that ERK2 and MPK4 showed preferred binding to different DNA sequences. Site-directed mutagenesis on the proposed DNA binding region of MPK4 greatly weakened DNA binding, confirming that MPK4 and ERK2 use the same structural elements to associate with DNA. Phosphorylation of the MAPKs through an upstream MKK affected the DNA binding capacity for both ERK2 and MPK4, although the effects differed. Lastly, we observed that a MPK4 mutant with a constitutively increased catalytic affinity displayed a markedly stronger DNA binding affinity compared to wild type MPK4 and phosphorylated MPK4. By demonstrating that the plant MPK4 associated with DNA in vitro, and that this association can be modified by phosphorylation and mutations, we open the possibility of additional kinase-independent functions in plant MAPKs.

AreA, a 96 kDa gene regulatory protein involved in nitrogen metabolite repression in Aspergillus nidulans, is a member of the GATA family of zinc finger DNA binding proteins, and regulates the expression of around 100 genes. This project was designed to examine the domain structure of AreA in this region of the protein, and to characterise the DNA binding domain Limited proteolysis has been employed to identify structural domains in the Cterminal region of AreA, which has been cloned and over-produced in E.coli. A variety of proteases have been used, and each reveals a dominant stable fragment of approximately 17-22 kDa. N-terminal sequencing and mass spectroscopy have been used to identify a number of these fragments. The major product following limited proteolysis by Glu-C is composed of two closely related species, a 164 residue fragment (17,489 Da) and a 157 residue fragment (16,857 Da). Both fragments encompass the Zn-finger motif, and share the same Cterminus, differing at the N-terminus by only 7 amino acids. The DNA sequence coding for the 157 residue fragment (16,857 Da) has been cloned and over-produced as a His-tag fusion protein. Further studies on this domain have shown that this putative domain has a relatively strong DNA binding constant with values in the nanomolar range. Structural analysis using Circular Dichroism, NMR and fluorescence suggests that the domain contains some irregular or unstructured regions. The regions that are structured are likely to be from the zinc-finger region, since DNA binding is maintained.

No description available.