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Query: UNIPROT:P06889 (Mol)
 630,302 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The dark and light reduction of nitrate and nitrite by cell-free preparations of the blue-green alga Anacystis nidulans has been investigated. The three following methods have been successfully applied to the preparation of active particulate fractions from the alga cells: (a) shaking with glass beads, (b) lysozyme treatment and lysis of the resulting protoplasts, and (c) sonication. The two enzymes of the nitrate-reducing system-namely, nitrate reductase and nitrite reductase-are firmly bound to the isolated pigment-containing particles, and can be easily solubilized by prolonging the vibration or sonication time. Both enzymes-whether solubilized or bound to the particles-depend on reduced ferredoxin as the immediate electron donor. In its presence, the alga particles catalyze the gradual photoreduction of nitrate to nitrite and ammonia, a process that can thus be considered as one of the most simple and relevant examples of Photosynthesis. Some of the properties of nitrate reductase have been studied. Nitrate reductase as well as nitrite reductase are adaptive enzymes repressed by ammonia.
Mol Cell Biochem 1976 Feb 25
PMID:Ferredoxin-dependent photosynthetic reduction of nitrate and nitrite by particles of Anacystis nidulans. 0 27

It had previously been held that chlorate is not itself toxic, but is rendered toxic as a result of nitrate reductase-catalysed conversion to chlorite. This however cannot be the explanation of chlorate toxicity in Aspergillus nidulans, even though nitrate reductase is known to have chlorate reductase activity. Among other evidence against the classical theory for the mechanism of chlorate toxicity, is the finding that not all mutants lacking nitrate reductase are clorate resistant. Both chlorate-sensitive and resistant mutants lacking nitrate reductase, also lack chlorate reductase. Data is presented which implicates not only nitrate reductase but also the product of the nirA gene, a positive regulator gene for nitrate assimilation, in the mediation of chlorate toxicity. Alternative mechanisms for chlorate toxicity are considered. It is unlikely that chlorate toxicity results from the involvement of nitrate reductase and the nirA gene product in the regulation either of nitrite reductase, or of the pentose phosphate pathway. Although low pH has an effect similar to chlorate, chorate is not likely to be toxic because it lowers the pH; low pH and chlorate may instead have similar effects. A possible explanation for chlorate toxicity is that it mimics nitrate in mediating, via nitrate reductase and the nirA gene product, a shut-down of nitrogen catabolism. As chlorate cannot act as a nitrogen source, nitrogen starvation ensues.
Mol Gen Genet 1976 Jul 23
PMID:Chlorate toxicity in Aspergillus nidulans. Studies of mutants altered in nitrate assimilation. 0 97

Induced wildtype cells of A. nidulans rapidly lost NADPH--linked nitrate reductase activity when subjected to carbon and or nitrogen starvation. A constitutive mutant at the regulatory gene for nitrate reductase, nir Ac 1, rapidly lost nitrate reductase activity upon carbon starvation. This loss of activity is thought to be due to a decrease in the NADPH concentration in the cells. Cell free extracts from wildtype cells grown in the presence of nitrate, rapidly lost their nitrate reductase activity when incubated at 25 degrees C. NADPH prevented this loss of activity. Wildtype cells grown in the presence of nitrate and urea have a higher initial NADPH:NADP+ ratio and cell free extracts from such cells lost their nitrate reductase activity slower than extracts of cells grown with nitrate alone. The Pentose Phosphate Pathway mutant, pppB-1, had a lower NADPH concentration compared with the wildtype grown under the same conditions and cell free extracts lost their nitrate reductase activity more rapidly than the wildtype. Cell free extracts of nirAc-1 and a non-inducible mutant for nitrate reductase, nirA- -14, upon incubation lost little of their nitrate reductase activity.
Mol Gen Genet 1977 Apr 29
PMID:In vivo and in vitro studies of nitrate reductase regulation in Asperillus nidulans. 1 26

Anacystis nidulans was grown photoautotrophically in a chemostat in the presence of light, air and CO2 as the sole carbon source. Either the amount of the nitrogen source in the medium or light intensity were used as growth-limiting parameters. 1. Cells of high glycogen content obtained by pre-incubation under nitrogen starvation conditions maintained their glycogen content during continuous cultivation. Both growth rate and the amount of cell-mass and of glycogen depended on the nitrate content of the medium and the light intensity. The values for the growth rate, the maximal rates of glycogen synthesis and of cell mass formation were 0.1 h-1, 6 mg/l.h and 17 mg/l.h, respectively. 2. Cells without glycogen which had been transferred from an exponentially growing batch culture to chemostat conditions showed increasing rates of growth and of cell mass formation when the light intensity was increased. A determination of specific values resulted in 0.15 h-1 for growth rate and 23 mg/1.h for cell mass formation. 3. The chemostat apparatus is described in detail.
Mol Cell Biochem 1978 May 31
PMID:Continuous cultivation in a chemostat of the phototrophic procaryote, Anacystis nidulans, under nitrogen-limiting conditions. 9 28

Neurospora crassa can utilize various purine bases such as xanthine or uric acid and their catabolic products as a nitrogen source. Four classes of mutants which affect the purine degradative pathway were isolated and studied. Mutants of the aln-1 class specifically lack allantoinase, while alc-1 mutants lack allantoicase. Mutants designated as xdh-1 cannot utilize hypoxanthine as a nitrogen source and are presumed to be deficient in xanthine dehydrogenase activity. A regulatory mutant, amr, was found to have only very low, uninduced levels of uricase, allantoinase, and allantoicase. None of these genes are closely linked to each other. The three initial enzymes involved in the catabolism of uric acid are controlled in a complex manner by both induction and repression. Several lines of evidence indicate that the true inducer of uricase and allantoicase is uric acid. The use of the newly isolated mutant strains made it possible to demonstrate that neither allantoin nor allantoic acid could act as inducers. Furthermore, hypoxanthine itself was shown to be ineffective as an inducer although it can be metabolized to form an inducer. A non-metabolizable analogue of uric acid, 8-azaxanthine, is a gratuitous inducer of these enzymes. Uricase and allantoicase were found to be synthesized coordinately, but they were not coordinately regulated with allantoinase. Both uricase and allantoicase are stable enzymes and do not undergo turnover; nor are they subject to feedback inhibition by ammonia. Allantoinase, however, is quite labile both in vivo and in vitro. This enzyme was found to turnover in vivo in the presence of cycloheximide with a half-life of approximately 20 minutes. The amr (for ammonia regulation) mutant cannot utilize a wide range of compounds, including purines, nitrate, and many amino acids as a nitrogen source and also displays a multiple enzyme loss. The amr gene appears to play a major role in the control of nitrogen metabolism. It is postulated that the amr locus encodes a regulatory protein which is required to activate transcription of the structural genes for a group of related enzymes involved in nitrogen metabolism.
Mol Gen Genet 1975 Aug 05
PMID:Genetic and metabolic control of the purine catabolic enzymes of Neurospora crasse. 12 63

One allele at each of the five nit loci in Neurospora crassa together with the wild type strain have been compared on various nitrogen sources with regard to (i) their growth characteristics (ii) the level of nitrate reductase and its associated activities (reduced benzyl viologen nitrate reductase and cytochrome c reductase) (iii) the level of nitrate reductase and (iv) their ability to take up nitrite from the surrounding medium. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that nit-3 is the structural gene for nitrate reductase, nit-1 specifies in part of molybdenum containing moiety which is responsible for the nit-3 gene product dimerising to form nitrate reductase, nit-4 and nit-5 are regulator genes whose products are involved in the induction of both nitrate reductase and nitrite reductase and nit-2 codes for a generalised ammonium activated repressor protein. Studies on the induction of nitrate reductase (and its associated activities) and nitrite reductase in wild type, nit-1 and nit-3 in the presence of either nitrate or nitrite suggest that each enzyme may be regulated independently of the other and that nitrite could be true co-inducer of the assimilatory pathway. Nitrite uptake experiments with nit-2, nit-4 and nit-5 strains show that whereas nit-4 and nit-5 are freely permeable to this molecule, it is unable to enter the nit-2 mycelium.
Mol Gen Genet 1976 May 07
PMID:Biochemical studies on the nit mutants of Neurospora crassa. 13 3

Cadmium nitrate, acetate and sulphate cause death of root meristems of Allium sativum at 5.10(-7) Mol/ml concentration for the two first ones and 10(-7) Mol/ml for the last one. Lower concentrations do not induce chromosomal aberrations. As to the cellular toxicity, cadmium salts are between phenyl-mercuric-hydroxid and lead nitrate, the first one being the most active.
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PMID:[Cytotoxicity of cadmium : study on root meristems of Allium sativum L]. 14 Jul 26

The levels of glucose-6-phosphate and 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase in wildtype cells of Aspergillus nidulans varied with the carbon and nitrogen source. In general, hexokinase activity did not vary with carbon or nitrogen source. The ammonium derepressed mutant amrA1 had only 50% of the wildtype level of hexokinase. Phosphoglucomutase activity was low in wildtype cells grown with nitrate, but high in cells grown with ammonium when glucose was the carbon source. A non-inducible mutant, nirA-1, in the regulatory gene for nitrate reductase, had high phosphoglucomutase activity when grown with nitrate or ammonium. A constitutive mutant nirAc1, in the regulatory gene for nitrate reductase had low phosphoglucomutase activity when grown with nitrate or ammonium. The mutants nir-1 and nirAc1 are recessive and semi-dominant respectively for abnormal phosphoglucomutase activity.
Mol Gen Genet 1979 Mar 09
PMID:The regulation of hexokinase and phosphoglucomutase activity in Aspergillus nidulans. 37 22

Previous work (Rand and Arst, 1977) led to the proposal that the nis-5 mutation results in a new low activity promoter for niiA, the structural gene for nitrite reductase in Aspergillus nidulans. Expression of niiA via this promoter differs from expression of niiA via its normal promoter/initiator in that expression by the new promoter is not subject to nitrate induction or ammonium repression. nis-5 reduces but does not abolish niiA expression mediated by the normal promoter/initiator. In this work we show that nis-5 is associated with and is probably identical to a non-reciprocal translocation in which a considerable portion of the centromere proximal region of the right arm of linkage group II is inserted into linkage group VIII between niiA and niaD, the tightly linked, probably contiguous structural genes for nitrate reductase. This implies that niiA, along with its normal promots yet unidentified by its normal role. Further, it indicates that niiA is transcribed from the niaD-proximal side. As niiA and niaD are separated by a large number of unrelated genes in nis-5 strains, we can safely conclude that expression of niiA does not occur solely by synthesis of a messenger which carries a niaD as well as a niiA transcript. Clearly, niiA and niaD do not form an operon for which a di- (or poly-) cistronic messenger by the only transcript. This is consistent with other experimental evidence which shows that the syntheses of nitrate and nitrite reductases are not coordinately regulated. Nevertheless, all of these data would also be consistent with a model in which niiA and niaD form an operon-type structure having overlapping transcripts, one being di- (or poly-) cistronic and including both niiA and niaD and another being monocistronic for niiA. The reduced niiA expression mediated by the normal promoter/initiator in nis-5 strains could be a consequence of the functioning or positioning of the new linkage group II niiA promoter. An alternative, but not mutually exclusive, explanation would be that the insertional translocation prevents synthesis of a niiA niaD dicistronic transcript so that only that component of niiA expression which is due to a monocistronic niiA messenger can be induced by nitrate (and nitrite) in nis-5 strains. The apparently low activity of the new linkage group II promoter in comparison to the normal niiA promoter/initiator might betoken considerable efficiency of the latter rather than any particular lack of efficiency of the former. In addition, this work has involved extensive new mapping in linkage group II, including both mitotic mapping of the centromere and meiotic mapping of previously unlocated markers. A series of crosses in cluding genotype combinations both heterozygous and homozygous for nis-5 has been used to map the break-points and orientation of the translocation. As one break-point is closer to the centromere of linkage group II than the most centromere proximal identified gene on the same (i.e...
Mol Gen Genet 1979 Jul 02
PMID:Do the tightly linked structural genes for nitrate and nitrite reductases in Aspergillus nidulans form an operon? Evidence from an insertional translocation which separates them. 38 64

We have designed a new medium for the differentiation of mutants of Salmonella typhimurium defective in the ability to reduce nitrate with formate, and have characterized 24 formate dehydrogenase (FDH) mutants isolated on this medium. The mutants were assayed for the ability to use formate to reduce benzyl viologen and phenazine methosulfate, and were mapped by means of conjugation and P22-mediated transduction. Mutants lacking the ability to reduce either dye were found to map at three distinct sites: at a site co-transducible with xyl (presumably fdhA), at a site or sites between 13U and 33U, but not co-transducible with aroA, bio, purB, pyrC, or pyrD (near, but not identical with fdhB), and at asite 10-20% co-transducible with pyrE, for which we suggest the designation fdhC. Six mutant isolates reduced benzyl viologen, but not phenazine methosulfate. They retained the ability to produce nitrite during growth with nitrate. They mapped between 83U and 89U, but no co-transduction was found with metE, glnA, metB, or argH. The combined biochemical and genetic data suggest the existence of a gene in this area which is essential for the reduction of nitrate with formate, but not for formate hydrogenlyase activity or for nitrate reductase activity.
Mol Gen Genet 1979
PMID:Formate dehydrogenase mutants of Salmonella typhimurium: a new medium for their isolation and new mutant classes. 39 18


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