This research was funded by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Grant No. N304 020437). “
“The High Taxonomic Fingerprint (HTF)-Microbi.Array is a fully validated phylogenetic microarray platform for a high taxonomic level characterization of the human gut microbiota. However, suffering from PCR-dependent biases in Bifidobacterium quantification, this tool is less appropriate when utilized for the characterization of the Bifidobacterium-dominated gut microbiota of breast-fed infants. To overcome this, we implemented a new combined approach based on HTF-Microbi.Array and qPCR for a reliable check details fingerprint of the infant-type microbiota. This methodology was applied in a preliminary comparative study of
the faecal microbiota of eight breast-fed infants, aged 2–6 months, and five young adults. Whereas the adult gut microbiota was Selleck Daporinad largely dominated by Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, the infant-type community was mainly dominated by Bifidobacterium,
with Enterobacteriaceae as the second dominant component. In accordance with the most recent literature in the field, the obtained microbiota fingerprints properly depicted the adult- and the infant-type microbiota, demonstrating the reliability of the HTF-Microbi.Array/qPCR combined approach in reflecting the peculiarities of the two intestinal microbial ecosystems. “
“Glutathionylspermidine synthetase/amidase (Gss) and the encoding gene (gss) have only been studied in Escherichia coli and several members of the Kinetoplastida
phyla. In the present article, we have studied the phylogenetic distribution of Gss and have found that Gss sequences are largely limited Bacterial neuraminidase to certain bacteria and Kinetoplastids and are absent in a variety of invertebrate and vertebrate species, Archea, plants, and some Eubacteria. It is striking that almost all of the 75 Enterobacteria species that have been sequenced contain sequences with very high degree of homology to the E. coli Gss protein. To find out the physiological significance of glutathionylspermidine in E. coli, we have performed global transcriptome analyses. The microarray studies comparing gss+ and Δgss strains of E. coli show that a large number of genes are either up-regulated (76 genes more than threefold) or down-regulated (35 genes more than threefold) by the loss of the gss gene. Most significant categories of up-regulated genes include sulfur utilization, glutamine and succinate metabolism, polyamine and arginine metabolism, and purine and pyrimidine metabolism. Earlier work from this laboratory showed that 95% of the intracellular spermidine and a large fraction of the intracellular glutathione are converted to monoglutathionylspermidine in Escherichia coli at the end of logarithmic growth (Dubin, 1959; Tabor & Tabor, 1970). Bollinger et al. (1995) and Kwon et al. (1997) reported the purification of glutathionylspermidine synthetase/amidase of E.