Hamsters in the experimental group were injected intraperitoneall

Hamsters in the experimental group were injected intraperitoneally with cocaine (20 mg/kg; Lannett Company, Inc., Philadelphia, PA, USA) Panobinostat clinical trial immediately before being placed in the initially non-preferred compartment for stimulus-paired sessions, whereas they received a 0.9% saline vehicle injection before being placed in the initially preferred compartment for no-stimulus sessions. The

control group received saline injections before being placed in either compartment in conditioning sessions. To confirm that all stimulus and no-stimulus paired groups had similar initial preference and difference scores, a one-way anova was used. To assess whether the stimuli (VS or cocaine) induced a CPP, data from the pretests and final tests were used to calculate a preference score, defined as [time in the stimulus-paired compartment/(time in stimulus-paired compartment+time in no-stimulus compartment)], and a difference score, defined as [time in the no-stimulus compartment–time in the stimulus-paired compartment] (Martínez & Paredes, 2001; Meerts & Clark, 2007; Tenk et al., 2009; Bell et al., 2010; Parada et al., 2010). find more Changes in preference and difference scores were determined by subtracting pretest measures from test measures for each hamster.

In the no-stimulus control animals, average change measures for preference score and difference score were determined to provide a standard for unconditioned change. Control change measures were then subtracted from each stimulus-paired experimental animal’s scores to correct for any unconditioned change. Corrected changes in preference and difference scores were then used in one-sample t-tests within each group, comparing the value to 0 to evaluate significant changes. These statistical procedures are similar to earlier studies that Mannose-binding protein-associated serine protease used paired t-tests to determine changes in preference and difference scores within a group (Meisel & Joppa, 1994; Martínez & Paredes, 2001; Kohlert & Olexa, 2005; Meerts & Clark, 2007; Tenk et al., 2009; Bell

et al., 2010; Parada et al., 2010). In addition, correcting for unconditioned changes observed in control animals reduces the chances of false positives, as any initial preferences for an outer compartment can sometimes be reduced after repeated equivalent exposures to those chambers (Bell et al., 2010). Significant changes in both preference and difference scores were required to determine that a conditioned place preference had been established; for simplicity, only preference scores are presented in figure format here (Meisel & Joppa, 1994; Bell et al., 2010). Here and with all other reported analyses, P < 0.05 was considered significant, and all statistical analyses were done with spss software (PASW Statistics 20; SPSS: An IBM Company, Chicago, IL, USA). Sixteen juvenile (P28) and 16 adult (P64) hamsters were weighed and randomly assigned to either the VS or the control group, n = 8.

[107] Histological re-subclassification of EMA is supposed to be

[107] Histological re-subclassification of EMA is supposed to be necessarily established to divide them into low-grade EMA and high-grade

EMA with the aid of next-generation sequencing technologies for integrated genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic characterization.[108] Not surprisingly, it has been demonstrated that the endometrial SEA shares genomic features with the ovarian SEA and basal-like breast cancer, and that the genomic features Selleckchem CHIR 99021 of endometrial carcinomas may affect their aggressive behavior.[108] Using mutation profiles as an adjunct to morphological subclassification is supposed to lead to improvement of the diagnostic reproducibility of endometrial carcinomas and serve in innovating targeted therapies for patients with endometrial carcinoma.[77] Taking advantage of genomic analysis results will beneficially lead to the exploration of routinely available antibodies, namely, so-called biomarkers that will be Adriamycin in vitro usable in immunohistochemistry. Consequently, these immunohistochemical markers could contribute to the identification of high-grade endometrial carcinomas that fail to be diagnosed based on conventional histological criteria, or seemingly low-grade endometrial carcinomas even having the potential of high-grade endometrial carcinomas. There are still numerous problems remaining regarding

the efforts to reduce the disagreement regarding high-grade endometrial carcinomas, especially endometrial carcinomas with intratumoral heterogeneity or ambiguity. In the exploration of new therapeutic regimens for endometrial carcinomas, morphological diagnostic confirmation in close association with the clinical outcome is of most practical importance. Finally, the nationwide establishment of a central pathological review system is considered to become one of the strategic attempts to keep the mortality rate of endometrial carcinomas as low as possible. There is no conflict of interest which needs to be to be disclosed. “
“To compare the classical double-layer uterine

closure to a double-layer purse-string uterine closure (Turan technique) in cesarean section regarding short- and long-term results. Patients were randomized into either the double-layer purse-string uterine closure 5-Fluoracil mouse arm (study group, 84 patients) or the classical double-layer uterine closure arm (control group, 84 patients). For short-term comparison, a detailed transvaginal ultrasound examination was planned in all patients 6 weeks after the operation and a wedge-shaped defect in the uterine incision scar was accepted as uterine scar defect and recorded. For the long-term comparison, subsequent pregnancies of these patients were followed up for any complication. The number of patients with ultrasonographically visible uterine scar defect was 12 (23.5% of all scar defects) in the study group whereas it was 39 (76.5% of all scar defects) in the control group (P < 0.001, χ2 = 15.42).

This approach is a quick and rather inexpensive tool to develop m

This approach is a quick and rather inexpensive tool to develop molecular markers for mycorrhizal fungi tracking and barcoding, to identify functional genes and to investigate the genome plasticity, adaptation and evolution. Comparative genomics, by revealing genome variations in closely related organisms, can provide valuable information both to understand the basic principles involved in diversification and to identify

potentially interesting traits. For example, genome-wide approaches have provided important information on genome plasticity and have allowed the identification of species/strain-specific genes related to the exploitation of the substrate, to disease and

stress tolerance (Hepworth et al., 2007; Huang et al., PARP inhibitor 2007). Despite the increasing number of fully sequenced genomes, direct comparison of genomic sequences remains expensive and time consuming and it requires bioinformatic skills especially for organisms with relatively large genomes. As an alternative approach, the genomic suppressive subtractive hybridization (gSSH) method has been developed to identify sequences present in a genome (tester) and absent in another one (driver). The gSSH method is a modification of the one developed by Diatchenko et al. (1996) for the generation of subtracted cDNA libraries and it was first applied in a study of Helicobacter pylori (Akopyants et al., 1998). When applied to bacterial genomes, gSSH has proved buy Volasertib useful for the identification of species-specific markers and bacterial virulence factors, for molecular epidemiology

and biodiversity studies (Winstanley, 2002). It has been used to compare the genomes of bacterial species such as Escherichia Fluorometholone Acetate coli/Salmonella typhimurium (Bogush et al., 1999), Yersinia pestis/Yersinia pseudotuberculosis (Radnedge et al., 2001) and Mycoplasma agalactae/Mycoplasma bovis (Marenda et al., 2004, 2005). It has also been applied to metagenomic studies, in order to compare the rumen microbial communities (Galbraith et al., 2004, 2008). If gSSH has been widely used to study differences between bacterial genomes, to our knowledge there is only one report where this technique has been applied to filamentous fungi (Harms et al., 2002). Another technique, genomic subtraction hybridizations (gSH), has been used in some filamentous fungi, where several rounds of gSH were applied to Magnaporthe grisea to isolate the mating genes (Kang et al., 1994) and to Verticillium dahliae to investigate intraspecies variation (Patterson & Dobinson, 1998). The gSSH method is based on a suppression PCR effect and combines normalization and subtraction in a single procedure to exclude genomic sequences that are common to the populations being compared.

An unexpected finding of the present study was that patients rece

An unexpected finding of the present study was that patients receiving 60 weeks of early cART had a better HRQL on some of the physical MOS-HIV subscales than patients receiving 24 weeks of early cART. Because this is the first study to report the impact of early cART during PHI on HRQL, we cannot relate this Akt inhibitor finding to those of previous studies. This result may be a real finding or may be the consequence of selection

bias, because not all participants enrolled in the RCT completed HRQL questionnaires. Clearly, this finding should be corroborated in future studies. A limitation of this substudy is that we included nonrandomized untreated PHI patients to increase the sample size of the no-treatment group. However, no differences were observed in HRQL between randomized and nonrandomized untreated patients. Additionally, we found a similar trend in results when analysing only the randomized patients.

In conclusion, in addition to the clinical benefit of temporary cART initiated during PHI, this substudy demonstrated that temporary early cART had a significant positive impact on patients’ HRQL over a study period of 96 weeks, despite the initial, short-term occurrence of physical symptoms, which were probably related to drug toxicity. Sotrastaurin molecular weight These findings provide important additional support for early intervention in patients with PHI and should be taken into account when considering early cART in patients with PHI. The authors wish to thank L. Gras of the HIV Monitoring Foundation for assisting with the data retrieval and the study participants for helping to establish this cohort. Doxacurium chloride Author contributions: MLG, JMP and PTN drafted the manuscript. MLG, RS and JMP established the cohort and together with MGAV, MK

and GJK were responsible for patient enrolment and the conduct of the trial at each study site. GK performed the data entry and MLG and PTN conducted the statistical analysis. All authors provided valuable input into protocol development and interpretation of data, and critically revised the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. Financial support: This study was investigator-driven and not supported by any sponsor or specific source of funding. The Primo-SHM study has been made possible through the collaborative efforts of the following investigators and institutions (*site coordination physicians): Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam: J. M. Prins*, J. M. A. Lange, M. L. Grijsen, R. Steingrover, J. N. Vermeulen, M. Nievaard, B. Slegtenhorst, H. Doevelaar, W. Koevoets, H. E. Nobel, A. Henderiks and F. J. J. Pijnappel; Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam: M. E. van der Ende*, B. J. A. Rijnders, I. Padmos, L. van Zonneveld and S. Been; Haga Ziekenhuis, locatie Leyenburg, Den Haag: R. H. Kauffmann*, E. F. Schippers, R. Korte and J. M.

5 billion years ago The switch of the coenzyme

specifici

5 billion years ago. The switch of the coenzyme

specificity of prokaryotic IDH from NAD+ to NADP+ is an ancient adaptation to anabolic demand for NADPH during growth on acetate (Zhu et al., 2005). The anaerobic Gram-negative bacterium Z. mobilis contains an IDH with ancient NAD+-dependency, suggesting that Z. mobilis is an ancient prokaryote and may not be selected under the pressure of poor carbon sources (i.e. two carbon compounds) through its evolutionary history. The Km value of recombinant ZmIDH for NAD+ (312 μM with Mg2+ and 245 μM with Mn2+) is higher than that determined for P. furiosus NAD+-IDH (68.3 μM) (Stokke et al., 2007), M. capsulatus NAD+-IDH (122 μM) (Steen et al., 2001), H. thermophilus NAD+-IDH (162 μM) (Aoshima et al., 2004) or A. thiooxidans NAD+-IDH (184 μM) (Inoue et al., 2002). Evidently, NAD+-IDHs generally show lower affinity towards their cofactors buy AZD8055 compared with NADP+-IDHs, e.g. E. coli NADP+-IDH (17 μM) (Chen & Yang, 2000) and Streptomyces lividans NADP+-IDH (2.42 μM) (Zhang et al., 2009). Due to the decreased cofactor affinity, Veliparib nmr NAD+-IDHs have a much lower catalytic efficiency

(kcat/Km) (0.28 μM−1 s−1 by the recombinant ZmIDH and 0.25 μM−1 s−1 by AtIDH) compared with their NADP+-dependent counterparts (4.7 μM−1 s−1 by EcIDH and 9.59 μM−1 s−1 by S. lividans IDH) (Chen & Yang, 2000; Inoue et al., 2002; Zhang et al., 2009). As the

reaction catalyzed by IDH is the only source of α-ketoglutarate, which is an essential carbon skeleton for amino acids, peptidoglycan and polyamine biosynthesis in Z. mobilis, ZmIDH seems to be very necessary in the metabolism of this ethanol production bacterium (Tsantili et al., 2007). Effects of nine different metal ions on the recombinant ZmIDH activity were also buy Cobimetinib examined in this study. The results showed that the recombinant ZmIDH was entirely dependent on the binding of a divalent cation. Mn2+ was found to be the most favorable agent, although its role can be largely replaced by Mg2+ (77.9%; Table 2). Mn2+ was also found to be the most effective activating ion for NADP+-IDH from S. lividans (Zhang et al., 2009). The recombinant ZmIDH can retain partial activity in the presence of Co2+ (42.5%), Zn2+ (2.8%), Ni2+ (12%), K+ (23.6%) and Na+ (8.5%), respectively (Table 2). The addition of 2 mM Co2+, Ca2+, and Ni2+ reduced the recombinant ZmIDH activity to different levels in the presence of Mn2+ or Mg2+. Zn2+ and Cu2+ were complete inhibitors of the recombinant ZmIDH activity. Neither Na+ or K+ affected the recombinant ZmIDH activity seriously in the presence of Mg2+ or Mn2+ (Table 2). Zymomonas mobilis isocitrate dehydrogenase was overexpressed and characterized in the present study.

Similarly, hepatitis flares among HIV/HBV coinfected patients hav

Similarly, hepatitis flares among HIV/HBV coinfected patients have been reported upon the discontinuation of lamivudine, emtricitabine and tenofovir. In the Swiss HIV observational cohort, liver enzyme elevation occurred in 29% of patients who discontinued lamivudine and in 5% this was severe, with three patients presenting with fulminant hepatitis

[175] Ivacaftor research buy at a median time of 6 weeks after discontinuation. Hepatitis flares that occurred after ART cessation should be treated by resumption of active anti-HBV treatment before significant liver failure occurs. 6.1.17 In the absence of obstetric complications, normal vaginal delivery can be recommended if the mother has fully suppressed HIV VL on HAART. Grading: 2C No data exist to support any benefit from PLCS in mothers with HBV/HIV coinfection and no robust RCT exists in HBV mono-infected women. In a meta-analysis of mono-infected HBV women (four randomized trials all from China involving 789 people

were included) where routine HBV neonatal vaccine and HBIG were used, there Pexidartinib purchase was strong evidence that PLCS vs. vaginal delivery could effectively reduce the rate of MTCT of HBV (RR 0.41; 95% CI 0.28–0.60) [176]. However, methodological concerns, including lack of information on randomization procedure, lack of allocation concealment and lack of blinding make the role of PLCS for PMTCT of HBV uncertain. In addition, a meta-analysis of six RCTs where lamivudine was used from the third trimester has demonstrated that lamivudine is effective in reducing transmission (HR: 0.31; 95% CI 0.15–0.63) [177]. Similarly, a single RCT in women positive for HBsAg and with an HBV DNA > 106 IU/mL demonstrated that telbivudine was also effective in reducing

MTCT for HBV (2.11% vs. 13.4%; P < 0.04) and lowering risk of postpartum ALT flare. Hence, the lack of a scientifically robust RCT evaluating the role of CS in preventing MTCT for mothers with HBV mono-infection and lack of any cohort or RCT data to support the use of CS in coinfection argue against advocating this in coinfected mothers. Although HBV DNA levels are increased as a result of HIV, the efficacy of lamivudine as well as telbivudine in reducing the rate of intrapartum transmission in mono-infection, efficacy of lamivudine, tenofovir Sinomenine and emtricitabine as part of HAART in reducing HBV DNA in non-pregnant coinfected patients, and use of tenofovir with either lamivudine or emtricitabine as standard practice in coinfected patients, collectively provide further reason against recommending CS in those coinfected. 6.1.18 Neonatal immunization with or without HBIG should commence within 24 h of delivery. Grading: 1A Immunoprophylaxis with HBV vaccine with or without HBIG given to the neonate has been shown in separate meta-analyses of RCTs to significantly reduce MTCT from HBV mono-infected women.

HIV-positive persons with CD4 cell counts <300 cells/μL should re

HIV-positive persons with CD4 cell counts <300 cells/μL should receive three doses of HAV vaccine over 6–12 months

instead of the standard two. 6.1.7 Tenofovir and emtricitabine should form the backbone of an ART regimen in naïve patients with wild-type HIV/HBV infection and no contraindication to either drug (Grading: learn more 1B). 6.1.8 If tenofovir is not currently part of HAART it should be added. Grading: 1B 6.1.9 Lamivudine/emtricitabine may be omitted from the ARV regimen and tenofovir given as the sole anti-HBV agent if there is clinical or genotypic evidence of lamivudine/emtricitabine resistant HBV. Grading: 1C 6.1.10 Lamivudine or emtricitabine should not be used as the only active drug against HBV in HAART because of the likelihood of emergent HBV resistance to these agents. Grading: 1B 6.1.11 Emtricitabine has potential antiviral benefits over lamivudine, is coformulated with tenofovir, and appears to be equally safe during pregnancy and hence is the preferred option

to be given with tenofovir in coinfection. Grading: 2D All HBV/HIV coinfected women should receive HAART containing tenofovir with emtricitabine or lamivudine treatment during pregnancy, unless contraindicated. Although lamivudine and emtricitabine are potent anti-HBV agents, monotherapy is associated with a high likelihood of HBV resistance www.selleckchem.com/products/ldk378.html in coinfected persons and hence therapy with either of these drugs, without a second anti-HBV active drug, is not recommended. Tenofovir is effective at suppressing HBV DNA in mono- and coinfected patients and may induce HBeAg seroconversion although, as for other antivirals, this may be less likely in coinfection. HBV resistance is extremely rare and combination with lamivudine or emtricitabine has been demonstrated to be effective at suppressing HBV DNA and may induce HBeAg seroconversion. Combining lamivudine/emtricitabine with tenofovir may also reduce the risk of breakthrough HBV viraemia [169]. Emtricitabine is structurally similar

to lamivudine but has a longer half-life and selects for resistance for both HBV and HIV less rapidly Farnesyltransferase and less often. Although not currently approved for HBV treatment, it induces a sharp reduction of HBV DNA in both mono- and coinfected patients. In one RCT of coinfected patients naïve to antivirals, combining emtricitabine with tenofovir has been shown to be more effective than emtricitabine alone (median time-weighted average concentration decrease was −5.32 log10 IU/mL in the tenofovir/emtricitabine group vs. −3.25 IU/mL in the emtricitabine group: P = 0.036) [172]. Further studies comparing emtricitabine/lamivudine with lamivudine alone produced similar results [173].

We were able to make a retrospective comparison of the performanc

We were able to make a retrospective comparison of the performance of the EuResist engine with 10 HIV drug resistance experts’ opinions on a set of 25 cases derived from patients harbouring drug-resistant virus. The BAY 73-4506 concentration number of cases was deliberately limited so that it would take a reasonable amount of time for the participants to complete the study. As a cautionary note, it must be taken into account

that the cases were selected from the EIDB rather than from an external source, although these cases have never been used during the development of the EuResist model. Moreover, the EIDB, including data from more than 100 different clinics in four countries, is likely to represent great diversification in drug prescription attitudes and patient populations. Overall, the EuResist engine performed at least as well as the human experts. The lowest number of incorrect calls in the binary classification

of success and failure was in fact made by EuResist and by only one of the experts. To mimic clinical practice, the experts Selleck Alectinib had access to the entire available patient history, including all CD4 cell counts and viral load measurements, past treatments and HIV-1 genotypes. It should be noted that the current version of EuResist does not include past viraemia levels and only simple surrogate markers of previous drug exposure, less detailed than those made available to the experts, are taken into account. Thus, the experts could consider some extra information over and above that considered by the expert system. However, it could be argued that the experts did not have any familiarity with the patients and the design thus failed to reproduce the real scenario where doctor–patient Tangeritin interaction plays a key role, particularly in assessing patient commitment to therapy. A prospective study comparing standard of care supplemented or not by the EuResist system is required to

evaluate appropriately the potential role of the engine in clinical practice. By design, this study did not allow assessment of whether (and by how much) taking into account the patient and virus data not included in the minimal TCE definition increased the accuracy of the prediction. However, such additional information has been consistently found to increase accuracy in several recent studies using rule-based or data-driven systems [13,18,19]. The correlation between the average quantitative prediction made by the experts and the quantitative prediction computed by EuResist was statistically significant. However, the agreement among the individual experts was rather low, both in the binary classification and in the quantitative score. This highlights the complexity of choosing an antiretroviral treatment in patients harbouring drug-resistant virus which results in frequent discordances in experts’ opinions.

A mutated SLCMV Rep, in which a frame shift mutation caused reten

A mutated SLCMV Rep, in which a frame shift mutation caused retention selleck kinase inhibitor of only 27 of the 351 amino acids, did not cause IS426 transposition in A. tumefaciens. These findings show that the multifunctional begomoviral Rep protein of SLCMV triggers transposition of IS426 in Agrobacterium. “
“Tuber aestivum is becoming an important commodity of great economical value in some European countries. At the same time, it is a highly protected organism in other countries, where it needs careful treatment. A reliable method of detection in roots and soil is thus needed for assessment of geographic

distribution, ecological studies and inoculation efficiency testing in man-made experiments. A PCR-based method of detection of T. aestivum using specific

primers was therefore developed. A pair of PCR primers Tu1sekvF/Tu2sekvR selective for T. aestivum and some genotypes of Tuber mesentericum was designed on the basis of the known internal transcribed spacer T. aestivum sequences. TaiI restriction cleavage was then used to distinguish the two species. The selectivity of the designed primer pair Sunitinib was evaluated using DNA extracted from specimens of a further 13 Tuber spp. Subsequently, the selectivity and robustness to false-positive results with nontarget DNA of the designed primers was compared with two other primer pairs (UncI/UncII and BTAE-F/BTAEMB-R). The occurrence of T. aestivum in soil and ectomycorrhizae much collected in its native habitat

has been successfully detected using the designed primers and nested PCR. The method is reliable and thus suitable for detection of T. aestivum in the field. Truffles (Tuber spp.) are ectomycorrhizal fungi producing edible hypogeous fruit bodies of economic importance. Tuber magnatum and Tuber melanosporum are some of the most prized and expensive delicacies in international haute cuisine. Tuber aestivum (including forma uncinatum) and several other Tuber spp. are less valued. Tuber aestivum (summer truffle) has been frequently overlooked in most European countries. Nowadays, it has been rediscovered in a number of habitats all over Europe (Chevalier & Frochot, 1997; Montecchi & Sarasini, 2000, Gažo et al., 2005, Pomarico et al., 2007) and is considered the most common European truffle. Soil and climatic requirements of the summer truffle can be met in many natural localities in Europe and this fungus is thus probably the easiest of all truffles to cultivate commercially. In addition, it is the only truffle species with fruit-bodies ripening advantageously from late-May up to winter (Chevalier & Frochot, 1997). These features are probably the reason for its gradually increasing commercial value. In some countries (e.g. France, burgundy truffle), T. aestivum is harvested, cultivated and marketed, whereas in others, for example, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, this species is considered critically endangered and protected by law. There, collecting of T.

Ten microliters of purified protein (1 mg mL−1) was added to 300 

Ten microliters of purified protein (1 mg mL−1) was added to 300 μL of cell suspension and incubated at 30 °C for 30 min with gentle shaking. The cells were centrifuged, washed with phosphate buffer and then resuspended in SDS-sample buffer. Unbound proteins in the supernatant were precipitated with 5% trichloroacetic

acid according to Steen et al. (2003) and resuspended in SDS-sample buffer. The presence of protein in both fractions was determined by Tricine–SDS-PAGE. The specific binding of gp24BD-GFP to bacterial cells was determined using the protocol of Loessner et al. (2002) with some modifications. The cells of the bacterial strains tested were grown to mid-exponential growth phase (OD570 nm of 0.5). A 60-μL aliquot of purified gp24BD-GFP at final concentration of 0.26 mg mL−1 http://www.selleckchem.com/products/atezolizumab.html was added to 100-μL aliquots of the cell suspensions and mixed. GFP protein at a final concentration of 0.36 mg mL−1 was used as a control. A 30-μL aliquot of GFP was mixed with the same cell substrate. Cells were visualized on freshly

poly-l-lysine-treated slides using fluorescence microscopy. All images were obtained using an Olympus BX61 microscope equipped with an Olympus DP30BW camera. Staurosporine Olympus cellp imaging software was used for imaging. The putative endolysin gene (ORF24) previously determined in the phage BFK20 genome (EMBL accession no. AJ278322) had to be corrected from 576 bp (ORF24) to 813 bp (ORF24′) because sequencing errors were detected which resulted in a frameshift mutation. The endolysin of BFK20 (gp24′) contains 270 aa, which corresponds to a 30.1-kDa protein. The size of BFK20 endolysin corresponds

to that of lysins isolated from DNA phages that infect Gram-positive bacteria. They are generally between 25 and 40 kDa in size and mostly possess a two-domain structure comprising an N-terminal catalytic region and a C-terminal cell wall binding region (Fischetti, 2010). Using bioinformatics we analyzed the predicted BFK20 endolysin aa sequence. Endolysins homologous to the gp24′ aa sequence were selected according to blastp results. A clustalw2 alignment of gp24′ with other phage endolysins (Fig. 1) showed higher similarity in the N-terminal region than in the C-terminal region. A Pfam database search revealed the presence of an amidase_2 (N-acetylmuramoyl-l-alanine amidase) catalytic domain (Pfam Orotidine 5′-phosphate decarboxylase accession no. PF01510, HmmPfam E-value 1e−08) between residues 17 and 155 of gp24′. We were able to locate the conserved histidines and aspartic acid involved in zinc binding and the conserved tyrosine involved in catalysis (Cheng et al., 1994) that are found in most of the aligned amidases (Fig. 1). In the C-terminal region of gp24′ we were unable to locate any of the known cell surface anchoring motifs (e.g. LysM, peptidoglycan-binding domain) (Loessner et al., 2002; Steen et al., 2003; Briers et al., 2007). The only similarity found was with the C-terminus of endolysins from the C. glutamicum strain R (blastpE-value 4e−105) and C.