Current Issues in Molecular Biology, Volume 6, Issue 2

Mental retardation is a frequent cause of intellectual and physical impairment. Several genes associated with mental retardation have been mapped to the X chromosome, among them, there is FMR1. The absence of or mutation in the Fragile Mental Retarda...

Oncogenes are ideal targets for therapies which down-regulate gene expression. However, effective modalities for altering gene expression in vivo have thus far proven to be elusive. Whilst there has been recent success with small molecule inhibitors...

Prokaryotic cyanobacteria express robust circadian (daily) rhythms under the control of a timing mechanism that is independent of the cell division cycle. This biological clock orchestrates global regulation of gene expression and controls the timin...

Since its discovery in the late 1980's, the family of secreted proteins termed the autotransporters has been expanding continuously to become the largest group of secreted proteins in Gram-negative bacteria. The type V secretion pathway, which inclu...

In response to temperature downshift, a number of changes occur in cellular physiology such as, (i) decrease in membrane fluidity, (ii) stabilization of secondary structures of nucleic acids leading to reduced efficiency of mRNA translation and tran...

Evolutionary and physiological considerations argue that study of hyperthermophilic archaea should reveal new molecular aspects of DNA stabilization and repair. So far, these unusual prokaryotes have yielded a number of genes and enzymatic activiti...

Recombination is a ubiquitous genetic process which results in the exchange of DNA between two substrates. Homologous recombination occurs between DNA species with identical sequence whereas illegitimate recombination can occur between DNA with very...

Hydrogenases (H₂ases) are metalloproteins. The great majority of them contain iron-sulfur clusters and two metal atoms at their active center, either a Ni and an Fe atom, the [NiFe]-H₂ases, or two Fe atoms, the [FeFe]-H₂ases. Enzymes of these two cla...

Molecular phylogenetic trees are constructed in three dimensions relative to the distribution of MW and pI classes and immunocrossreactivity against polyclonal antibodies to lens crystallins, as well as multiple sequence alignment between amino acid...