A novel property of DNA is described: the capacity of some bacterial DNA sequences to induce electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions. It appears to be a resonance phenomenon triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves. The genomic DNA of most pathogenic bacteria contains sequences which are able to generate such signals. This opens the way to the development of highly sensitive detection system for chronic bacterial infections in human and animal diseases.
In the absence of the viral vif gene, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may be restricted by the APOBEC3G gene on chromosome 22. The role of the HIV Vif protein is to exclude host cell APOBEC3G from the budding virion. As APOBEC3G shows sequence homology to cytidine deaminases, it is presumed that in the absence of Vif, cytidine residues in the cDNA are deaminated yielding uracil. It is not known if additional proteins mediate APOBEC3G function or if deamination occurs in concert with reverse transcription. This report describes an in vitro assay showing that Baculovirus derived APOBEC3G alone extensively deaminates cDNA independently of reverse transcriptase. It reproduces the dinucleotide context typical of G --> A hypermutants derived from a Delta(vif) virus. By using an RNaseH- form of reverse transcriptase, it was shown that the cDNA has to be free of its RNA template to allow deamination. APOBEC3G deamination of dC or dCTP was not detected. In short, APOBEC3G is a single-stranded DNA cytidine deaminase capable of restricting retroviral replication.
We report here the complete sequence of the mitochondrial (mt) genome of the pathogenic yeast Candida glabrata. This 20 kb mt genome is the smallest among sequenced hemiascomycetous yeasts. Despite its compaction, the mt genome contains the genes encoding the apocytochrome b (COB), three subunits of ATP synthetase (ATP6, 8 and 9), three subunits of cytochrome oxidase (COX1, 2 and 3), the ribosomal protein VAR1, 23 tRNAs, small and large ribosomal RNAs and the RNA subunit of RNase P. Three group I introns each with an intronic open reading frame are present in the COX1 gene. This sequence is available under accession number AJ511533.
Caveolin-1 is a scaffolding protein that organizes and concentrates specific ligands within the caveolae membranes. We identified a conserved caveolin-1 binding motif in the HIV-1 transmembrane envelope glycoprotein gp41 and designed several synthetic peptides, referred to as CBD1, corresponding to the consensus caveolin-1 binding domain in gp41. In rabbits, these peptides elicit the production of antibodies that inhibit infection of primary CD4(+) T lymphocytes by various primary HIV-1 isolates. Interestingly, gp41 exists as a stable complex with caveolin-1 in HIV-infected cells. Anti-CBD1 peptide antibodies, therefore, might be functional by inhibiting the potential interaction of gp41 with caveolin-1. Because of their capacity to elicit antibodies that inhibit the different clades of HIV-1, CBD1-based peptides may represent a novel synthetic universal B cell epitope vaccine candidate for HIV/AIDS. Moreover, such peptides could also have an application as a therapeutic vaccine since CBD1-specific antibodies are rare in HIV-infected individuals from several geographic origins.
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