Alkaline phosphatase of Blastocladiella emersonii: partial purification and characterization.
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Alkaline phosphomonoesterase (EC 3.1.3.1) activity from Blastocladiella emersonii, while displaying typically broad substrate specificity for phosphorylated organic compounds, exhibited nearly complete substrate preference for N-acetylglucosamine-6-phosphate over N-acetylglucosamine-1-phosphate. Enzyme in zoospore extracts was purified 43-fold by differential centrifugation followed by gel filtration (Sephadex G-200) and then by ion-exchange chromatography (diethylaminoethyl-cellulose). The partially purified enzyme displayed an apparent molecular weight (Sephadex G-200) of approximately 170,000. The activity of partially purified enzyme exhibited a pH optimum of pH 8.5, did not require a metal divalent cation, but was inhibitable by ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid. During the life cycle of the organism, the specific activity of the phosphatase decreased slightly during germination and early exponential growth but then increased about 4.5-fold during sporulation. B. emersonii alkaline phosphatase does not appear to be a repressible enzyme. (+info)
Blastocladiella emersonii expresses a centrin similar to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii isoform not found in late-diverging fungi.
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Centrins are members of the calcium-binding EF-hand protein superfamily which can be divided into two subfamilies, probably associated with different functions: one related to Chlamydomonas reinhardtii centrin, CrCenp, and the other, represented by Saccharomyces cerevisiae isoform, ScCdc31p. ESTs encoding the two isoforms (BeCen1 and BeCen3) from the chytridiomycete Blastocladiella emersonii were isolated, and expression of the CrCenp-type centrin, BeCen1, was analyzed throughout the fungus life cycle. Becen1 mRNA levels increase transiently during sporulation and protein levels present a similar pattern. Immunolocalization studies seem to localize BeCen1 at the basal body zone and in the cytoplasm surrounding the nuclear cap, a zoospore organelle. (+info)
Cyclic nucleotide metabolism coupled to cytodifferentiation of Blastocladiella emersonii.
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Cyclic GMP and cyclic AMP levels during growth and differentiation of B. emersonii were measured by use of chemical, biochemical, and immunologic assays. Of particular interest was the finding that net synthesis of cyclic GMP occurred during a single stage of its life cycle, sporulation, when intracellular levels increased 50- to 100-fold in a process requiring protein and RNA synthesis. (+info)
SpotWhatR: a user-friendly microarray data analysis system.
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SpotWhatR is a user-friendly microarray data analysis tool that runs under a widely and freely available R statistical language (http://www.r-project.org) for Windows and Linux operational systems. The aim of SpotWhatR is to help the researcher to analyze microarray data by providing basic tools for data visualization, normalization, determination of differentially expressed genes, summarization by Gene Ontology terms, and clustering analysis. SpotWhatR allows researchers who are not familiar with computational programming to choose the most suitable analysis for their microarray dataset. Along with well-known procedures used in microarray data analysis, we have introduced a stand-alone implementation of the HTself method, especially designed to find differentially expressed genes in low-replication contexts. This approach is more compatible with our local reality than the usual statistical methods. We provide several examples derived from the Blastocladiella emersonii and Xylella fastidiosa Microarray Projects. SpotWhatR is freely available at http://blasto.iq.usp.br/~tkoide/SpotWhatR, in English and Portuguese versions. In addition, the user can choose between "single experiment" and "batch processing" versions. (+info)
Comparative EST analysis provides insights into the basal aquatic fungus Blastocladiella emersonii.
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BACKGROUND: Blastocladiella emersonii is an aquatic fungus of the Chytridiomycete class, which is at the base of the fungal phylogenetic tree. In this sense, some ancestral characteristics of fungi and animals or fungi and plants could have been retained in this aquatic fungus and lost in members of late-diverging fungal species. To identify in B. emersonii sequences associated with these ancestral characteristics two approaches were followed: (1) a large-scale comparative analysis between putative unigene sequences (uniseqs) from B. emersonii and three databases constructed ad hoc with fungal proteins, animal proteins and plant unigenes deposited in Genbank, and (2) a pairwise comparison between B. emersonii full-length cDNA sequences and their putative orthologues in the ascomycete Neurospora crassa and the basidiomycete Ustilago maydis. RESULTS: Comparative analyses of B. emersonii uniseqs with fungi, animal and plant databases through the two approaches mentioned above produced 166 B. emersonii sequences, which were identified as putatively absent from other fungi or not previously described. Through these approaches we found: (1) possible orthologues of genes previously identified as specific to animals and/or plants, and (2) genes conserved in fungi, but with a large difference in divergence rate in B. emersonii. Among these sequences, we observed cDNAs encoding enzymes from coenzyme B12-dependent propionyl-CoA pathway, a metabolic route not previously described in fungi, and validated their expression in Northern blots. CONCLUSION: Using two different approaches involving comparative sequence analyses, we could identify sequences from the early-diverging fungus B. emersonii previously considered specific to animals or plants, and highly divergent sequences from the same fungus relative to other fungi. (+info)
Transcriptome analysis in response to heat shock and cadmium in the aquatic fungus Blastocladiella emersonii.
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The global transcriptional response of the chytridiomycete Blastocladiella emersonii to environmental stress conditions was explored by sequencing a large number of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from three distinct cDNA libraries, constructed with mRNA extracted from cells exposed to heat shock and different concentrations of cadmium chloride. A total of 6,350 high-quality EST sequences were obtained and assembled into 2,326 putative unigenes, 51% of them not previously described in B. emersonii. To approximately 59% of the unigenes it was possible to assign an orthologue in another organism, whereas 41% of them remained without a putative identification, with transcripts related to protein folding and antioxidant activity being highly enriched in the stress libraries. A microarray chip was constructed encompassing 3,773 distinct ESTs from the B. emersonii transcriptome presently available, which correspond to a wide range of biological processes. Global gene expression analysis of B. emersonii cells exposed to stress conditions revealed a large number of differentially expressed genes: 122 up- and 60 downregulated genes during heat shock and 189 up- and 110 downregulated genes during exposure to cadmium. The main functional categories represented among the upregulated genes were protein folding and proteolysis, proteins with antioxidant properties, and cellular transport. Interestingly, in response to cadmium stress, B. emersonii cells induced genes encoding six different glutathione S-transferases and six distinct metacaspases, as well as genes coding for several proteins of sulfur amino acid metabolism, indicating that cadmium causes oxidative stress and apoptosis in this fungus. All sequences described in this study have been submitted to the GenBank EST section with the accession numbers EE 730389 to EE 736848. (+info)
Variation in levels of enzymes related to energy metabolism in alternative developmental pathways of Blastocladiella emersonii.
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The activities of phosphofructokinase (PFK), fructose diphosphatase (FDP), nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) and NAD phosphate (NADP)-linked isocitrate dehydrogenases (IDHNAD, IDHNADP), two NAD-linked glutamate dehydrogenases (GDH1, GDH2), and isocitrate lyase were studied during the development of the two phenotypes, ordinary colorless and resistant sporangia (OC and RS plants), of water mold Blastocladiella emersonii in synchronized liquid cultures. The OC plants had a generation time of about 12 h, whereas the RS plants required 3.5 days to reach maturity. All the enzymes were present throughout the development of both phenotypes. In zoospores, PFK, FDP, and GDH2 were localized in the cytosol. The IDHNADP activity was distributed with two-thirds in the soluble and one-third in the particulate fraction. GDH1 and IDHNAD showed the same distribution and were predominantly present in the particulate fraction, presumably in the mitochondria. Isocitrate lyase was found in the particulate fraction. The enzyme levels changed considerably during development. FDP and IDHNADP varied in a parallel manner. Similarly, the three enzymes PFK, IDHNAD and GDH1 showed parallel variations. The activity patterns for all enzymes were different for the OC and RS pathways. Isocitrate lyase exhibited the largest changes in activity during development. Thus, during OC plant formation, its activity decreased by a factor of 20. GDH2 varied similarly to PFK and IDHNADP during OC plant development, whereas it behaved like isocitrate lyase during RS plant development. The ratios between anabolic and catabolic enzymes were higher in mature plants than in zoospores and higher in RS plants than in OC plants. The results indicate that the variations in the enzyme levels are secondary to the critical changes involved in the transition from one developmental pathway to the other. (+info)
Global gene expression analysis during germination in the chytridiomycete Blastocladiella emersonii.
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