8,641 research outputs found
Specific primers for the detection of freshwater alphaproteobacterial magnetotactic cocci
Freshwater magnetotactic cocci within Alphaproteobacteria are of ecological interest due to their ubiquitous
distribution in aquatic environments as well as their potential roles in iron cycling and the bulk magnetism of sediment. To effectively investigate the diversity and distribution of these cocci, specific primers (FMTCf and FMTCr) were developed. Their specificity, applicability, and effectiveness were then evaluated theoretically and empirically. [Int Microbiol 2009; 12(4):237-242
A Maxwell-vector p-wave holographic superconductor in a particular background AdS black hole metric
We study the p-wave holographic superconductor for AdS black holes with
planar event horizon topology for a particular Lovelock gravity, in which the
action is characterized by a self-interacting scalar field nonminimally coupled
to the gravity theory which is labeled by an integer . As the Lovelock
theory of gravity is the most general metric theory of gravity based on the
fundamental assumptions of general relativity, it is a desirable theory to
describe the higher dimensional spacetime geometry. The present work is devoted
to studying the properties of the p-wave holographic superconductor by
including a Maxwell field which nonminimally couples to a complex vector field
in a higher dimensional background metric. In the probe limit, we find that the
critical temperature decreases with the increase of the index of the
background black hole metric, which shows that a larger makes it harder for
the condensation to form. We also observe that the index affects the
conductivity and the gap frequency of the holographic superconductors.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure
Magnetosome Gene Duplication as an Important Driver in the Evolution of Magnetotaxis in the Alphaproteobacteria
The evolution of microbial magnetoreception (or magnetotaxis) is of great interest in the fields of microbiology, evolutionary biology, biophysics, geomicrobiology, and geochemistry. Current genomic data from magnetotactic bacteria (MTB), the only prokaryotes known to be capable of sensing the Earth’s geomagnetic field, suggests an ancient origin of magnetotaxis in the domain Bacteria. Vertical inheritance, followed by multiple independent magnetosome gene cluster loss, is considered to be one of the major forces that drove the evolution of magnetotaxis at or above the class or phylum level, although the evolutionary trajectories at lower taxonomic ranks (e.g., within the class level) remain largely unstudied. Here we report the isolation, cultivation, and sequencing of a novel magnetotactic spirillum belonging to the genus Terasakiella (Terasakiella sp. strain SH-1) within the class Alphaproteobacteria. The complete genome sequence of Terasakiella sp. strain SH-1 revealed an unexpected duplication event of magnetosome genes within the mamAB operon, a group of genes essential for magnetosome biomineralization and magnetotaxis. Intriguingly, further comparative genomic analysis suggests that the duplication of mamAB genes is a common feature in the genomes of alphaproteobacterial MTB. Taken together, with the additional finding that gene duplication appears to have also occurred in some magnetotactic members of the Deltaproteobacteria, our results indicate that gene duplication plays an important role in the evolution of magnetotaxis in the Alphaproteobacteria and perhaps the domain Bacteria
- …