The Arabidopsis thaliana cDNA sequencing projects 1This paper was presented at the 24th FEBS Meeting in Barcelona.1

AbstractNearly 30 000 Arabidopsis thaliana EST (Expressed Sequence Tags) have been produced by a French-American consortium. Despite redundancy, these sequences tag about half of the expected Arabidopsis genes. Approximately 40% of the non-redundant EST can be assigned a putative function by simple homology search. This programme allowed the identification of a large number of genes which would have been very difficult to isolate by other classical techniques. It considerably stimulated many areas of plant biology by the rapid discovery a large number of genes, by revealing multigene families and by allowing the analysis of differential expression of the different members. Finally this programme facilitated construction of physical maps of the chromosomes and opened the way for complete sequencing of the Arabidopsis genome and comparative mapping of the major plant crops.© 1997 Federation of European Biochemical Societie

Contrasting effects of human THP-1 cell differentiation on levofloxacin and moxifloxacin intracellular accumulation and activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes.

Background and aims Listeria monocytogenes and Staphylococcus aureus invade and multiply in THP-1 monocytes. Fluoroquinolones accumulate in these cells, but are less active against intracellular than extracellular forms of L. monocytogenes and S. aureus. We examined whether differentiation of THP-1 monocytes into adherent, macrophage-like cells increases fluoroquinolone uptake and activity. Methods THP-1 monocytes were differentiated with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) and compared with unstimulated cells for: (i) moxifloxacin and levofloxacin accumulation; and (ii) activity against phagocytosed L. monocytogenes and S. aureus (5 h contact). Results The differentiation of THP-1 monocytes caused: (i) a 3- to 4-fold increase in moxifloxacin uptake and a significant increase in its activity against intracellular L. monocytogenes (from 1.3 log(10) to 2.1 log(10) cfu decrease compared with the post-phagocytosis inoculum), but not against S. aureus (1.0-1.2 log(10) cfu decrease throughout); and (ii) no change in levofloxacin accumulation and intracellular activity against either L. monocytogenes or S. aureus. Conclusions Although differentiation of monocytes enhances the uptake and activity of moxifloxacin against L. monocytogenes, this cannot be extended to other intracellular bacteria and to levofloxacin. These results further demonstrate that antibiotic intracellular accumulation and activity are not necessarily linked and suggest that intracellular drug and pathogen combinations must be studied individually

Phospholipid transfer protein: full-length cDNA and amino acid sequence in maize

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