Bacterial lipopolysaccharides as inducers of disease resistance in tobacco

The cell wall component of Pseudomonas solanacearum that induces disease resistance in tobacco was highly heat stable at neutral or alkaline pH but highly labile at acid pH. Activity was unaffected by nucleases and proteases but destroyed by a mixture of beta-glycosidases. Washing of bacterial cell walls released a lipopolysaccharide (LPS) fraction with high inducer activity. Purified LPS, extracted by a variety of procedures from whole cells, isolated cell walls, and culture filtrates of both smooth and rough forms of P. solanacearum, induced disease resistance in tobacco at concentrations as low as 50 microgram/ml. The LPS from the non-plant pathogens Escherichia coli B, E. coli K, and Serratia marcescens was also active. Cell wall protein, free phospholipid, and nucleic acids were not necessary for activity. Moreover, since LPS from rough forms was active, the O-specific polysaccharide of the LPS was not required for activity. Hydrolysis of the remaining core-lipid A linkage or deacylation of lipid A destroyed inducer activity. When injected into tobacco leaves, purified LPS attached to tobacco mesophyll cell walls and induced ultrastructural changes in the host cell similar to those induced by attachment of whole heat-killed bacteria.

A study on the autoactivation of rabbit muscle phosphorylase kinase

Under conditions favoring its autocatalytic reaction, phosphorylase kinase may be activated and phosphorylated in 2-(N-morpholino)ethanesulfonate (Mes) buffer to a much higher level than in beta-glycerophosphate buffer. The fact that the reaction is autocatalytic is supported by several observations: (a) the progress curve of the reaction exhibits a pronounced lag phase, (b) the reaction is strongly inhibited by ethylene glycol bis(beta-aminoethyl ether)-N,N'-tetraacetate, which inhibits phosphorylase kinase, (c) the pH profile of the reaction resembles that of the phosphorylase b to a reaction as catalyzed by nonactivated phosphorylase kinase, and (d) the reaction is not significantly affected by adenosine 3':5'-monophosphate (cAMP) nor by the heat-stable protein inhibitor of cAMP-dependent protein kinases. When fully autoactivated, phosphorylase kinase possesses an activity that is 100% higher than that of the protein kinase-activated form. The results suggest that autophosphorylation of phosphorylase kinase may be an important regulatory mechanism. The autocatalytic reaction involves phosphorylation of the two larger subunits of phosphorylase kinase, i.e. subunits A and B, with a combined total of 7 to 9 phosphates incorporated per mol of enzyme. Although the cAMP-dependent protein kinase also catalyzes the phosphorylation of subunits A and B, the two mechanisms of phosphorylation appear to involve different sites. Prior phosphorylation of phosphorylase kinase by the protein kinase has little effect on the level of autophosphorylation. Thus activation of phosphorylase kinase may be brought about by phosphorylation of the enzyme at different sites.

Image restoration by singular value decomposition

We demonstrate by a computer simulation example that singular value decomposition is a powerful tool for restoring noisy linearly degraded images. We also discuss a way of reducing the computation time requirement.

Substrate specificity of the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase

The protein substrate specificity of the catalytic subunit of rabbit skeletal muscle cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase (EC 2.7.1.37; ATP:protein phosphotransferase) has been studied using genetic variants of beta casein. It was found that beta casein-B was phosphorylated at a much greater rate than beta caseins A1, A2, A3, or C. The enhanced phosphorylation of beta casein-B, as compared with the most common variant A2, was attributed to an arginine substitution for a serine at position 122, which caused a nearby residue, serine 124, to become a phosphorylation site for the protein kinase. These results further support the concept that the local primary structure is important in specificity and that arginine may be a specific determinant common to all the local phosphorylation site sequences recognized by the cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase.

Iterative image restoration

The projection method of solving a set of linear equations was used to restore linearly degraded images. The advantages of this method are that it always converges, it can readily make use of a priori information about the image, and it does not need excessive computation time. Experimental results indicate that this method could potentially achieve superresolution.