Mechanisms And Regulation Of Carbohydrate Transport In Bacteria

Mechanisms and Regulation of Carbohydrate Transport in Bacteria reviews the developments in the study of the mechanisms and regulation of carbohydrate transport in prokaryotic organisms. The book presents the progress made in the understanding of transport and regulation of carbohydrates in bacteria in the molecular level. Aspects on the important structural and topographical features of several sugar permeases in Escherichia coli are elucidated; the energy-coupling processes are clearly delineated for most (but not all) types of bacterial carbohydrate permease systems; and mechanistic details of the translocation processes are proposed. Molecular biologists, microbial biochemists, and cell biologists will find the book a good source of information.

Following it's discovery in E.coli by Kundig, Ghosh and Rosema thirty seven years ago, a wealth of information has accumulated on the bacterial Phosphotransferase system (PTS). Since then the PTS has been found in a wide variety of different bacteria where it has been recognised to play a pivotal role in numerious aspects of bacterial cellular physiology. While the primary functions of this system involve sugar reception, transport and phosphorylation, the secondary functions include the regulation, both directly and indirectly, of important metabolic pathways. In this book, Internationally recognised authors review the current research on the PTS, discuss the multifaceted structural and functional aspects of the system and attempt to provide a realistic forecast of future discoveries. Study of this important system will contribute to our understanding of prokaryotic physiology and pathogenesis, will allow major advances in biotechnology, and will result in the development of agents capable of effectively combating harmful microorganisms.

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions Oliver Wendell Holmes Our current understanding of sex and biological differentiation results from the application of three principal experimental approaches to these subjects: those of the physiologist, the biochemist, and the geneticist. These three approaches are illustrated by the materials presented in the chapters of this volume. Chapters 1-5 emphasize conceptualization of developmental processes, describing systems principally from the standpoint of the physiologist. Structures and functions are defined with only occasional reference to specific molecular details. Chapters 6- 10 present the views of the biochemist, attempting to describe functions influ encing or regulating cellular behavior at the molecular level. And Chapters 11- 14 illustrate the approaches of the modem-day geneticist in his attempts to gain a detailed understanding of processes controlling gene expression. While it is possible to delineate these three major sections, each emphasizing a distinct experimental approach, it must be realized that the yield of knowledge increases exponentially with the number of experimental approaches available to the investigator. Information resulting from the application of each of these approaches must converge to give the same answers for anyone biological phenomenon in anyone experimental system. Further, if we can learn of details regarding a particular process by applying different experimental approaches, our postulates concerning the underlying molecular mechanisms are likely to be more accurate. But biological systems are not unrelated.

Foods fermented with lactic acid bacteria are an important part of the human diet. Lactic acid bacteria play an essential role in the preservation of food raw materials and contribute to the nutritional, organoleptic, and health properties of food products and animal feed. The importance of lactic acid bacteria in the production of foods throughout the world has resulted in a continued scientific interest in these micro-organisms over the last two decades by academic research groups as well as by industry. This research has resulted in a number of important scientific breakthroughs and has led to new applications. The most recent of these advances is the establishment of the complete genome sequences of a number of different lactic acid bacterial species. To communicate and stimulate the research on lactic acid bacteria and their applications, a series of tri-annual symposia on lactic acid bacteria was started in 1983 under the auspices of the Netherlands Society for Microbiology (NVVM), which was later also supported by the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS). The aim of these state-of-the-art symposia is to offer a unique platform for universities, institutes, and industry in this area of biotechnology, to present recent work, to obtain information on new developments, and to exchange views with colleagues from all over the world on scientific progress and applications. The growing number of participants at these symposia has been a clear demonstration of the interest of the international industrial and scientific community in this area of research. The 7th Symposium is based on a number of plenary lectures that review the scientific progress of the last years in the different areas of research on lactic acid bacteria, and which are documented in this special issue of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

The Evolution of Metabolic Function presents comprehensive discussions on a variety of topics that will interest scientists and students studying the evolution of enzyme activities, the evolution of enzymatic pathways, and the evolution and development of metabolic functions. Laboratory experiments designed to develop new enzyme activities and new metabolic pathways are discussed. The most recent techniques comparing protein and gene structures are used to analyze and discuss the evolution and development of such metabolic functions as the bacterial phosphoenolpyruvate:sugar phosphotransferase system, the mandelate pathway of microorganisms, bacterial alcohol metabolism, and certain microbial amino acid biosynthetic pathways. The book also includes some unique speculations regarding the origin of early Archaean cells and the prebiotic evolution of complex molecules.