Diversity and Strain Specificity of Plant Cell Wall Degrading Enzymes Revealed by the Draft Genome of Ruminococcus flavefaciens FD-1

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Abundance and Diversity of Dockerin-Containing Proteins in the Fiber-Degrading Rumen Bacterium, Ruminococcus flavefaciens FD-1

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Outer membrane protein folding from an energy landscape perspective

The cell envelope is essential for the survival of Gram-negative bacteria. This specialised membrane is densely packed with outer membrane proteins (OMPs), which perform a variety of functions. How OMPs fold into this crowded environment remains an open question. Here, we review current knowledge about OFMP folding mechanisms in vitro and discuss how the need to fold to a stable native state has shaped their folding energy landscapes. We also highlight the role of chaperones and the β-barrel assembly machinery (BAM) in assisting OMP folding in vivo and discuss proposed mechanisms by which this fascinating machinery may catalyse OMP folding

Hybrid Metaheuristics for Multi-objective combinatorial optimization

Many real-world optimization problems can be modelled as combinatorial optimization problems. Often, these problems are characterized by their large size and the presence of multiple, conflicting objectives. Despite progress in solving multi-objective combinatorial optimization problems exactly, the large size often means that heuristics are required for their solution in acceptable time. Since the middle of the nineties the trend is towards heuristics that “pick and choose” elements from several of the established metaheuristic schemes. Such hybrid approximation techniques may even combine exact and heuristic approaches. In this chapter we give an overview over approximation methods in multi-objective combinatorial optimization. We briefly summarize “classical” metaheuristics and focus on recent approaches, where metaheuristics are hybridized and/or combined with exact methods