Mechanisms of Enzymatic Bacteriolysis

Abstract

basic science. Consequently, such major enterprises must be examined outside the normal level-of-effort framework. And since the economics of choice do not help much in dealing with such matters, the politics of choice may govern-such factors, for example, as national scientific posture.From all this one can gather that budget decisions affecting science are among the hardest to make. What has to be remembered is that decisions affecting research are frequently as opportunistic as those affecting other public investments, in the sense that they are made in a bargaining process that is common ground for all problems of choice. There can be no fail-safe procedure to eliminate risk in budgeting for science.In the folkways of bureaucracy, the role of the Bureau of the Budget tends to loom bigger than life. Political and behavioral scientists have begun to probe this phenomenon, with results that threaten to expose us as human, after all. Still, the legends persist. One is made to feel that spine-chilling rites are being practiced in the quaintly Byzantine edifice next to the White House. This is largely our own fault, for taking to heart the counsel of anonymity. We suffer in silence and bury our dead quietly. Victories go uncelebrated, defeats unrecorded. Yet there is in the bureau's character a saving streak that recalls the opening line of Scaramouche-he was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world is mad.As this is being written, the 1968 budget is before the Congress. Though its prose is sedate, one can hardly miss the signs of ordeal that marked its preparation. Painful choices are apparent, and the ends-means squeeze starkly visible. With all this, expenditures for R & D are budgeted to in-crease by one-half billion dollars, to a record high of more than $17 billion. Funds for development will be smaller, while outlays for research will be significantly greater than in the current fiscal year. It may not be an affluent growth pattern, but neither does it justify gloom and predictions of doom. In the marine sciences, in urban research, in basic science, in weather research, and elsewhere, some gains have been managed. Under less trying circumstances the outcome might have been considerably better for science, but, by any reasonable measure, the aggregate level of investment is massive and growing.But size and trend are not indicators of balance or of social returns on investment. This is precisely why it is always open season when the budget sprints across the political horizon. As a moving target it brings out the sportsman in each of us.

Human Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein-L Is an N-Acetylmuramoyl-L-alanine Amidase

“…scavenger) receptors on phagocytic cells and bacteriolytic enzymes that digest bacteria in phagolysosomes. Serum, body secretions, and phagocytic cell granules contain abundant amounts of lysozyme, an enzyme that hydrolyzes the glycosidic bond between MurNAc and GlcNAc of PGN (47,48). Lysozyme has direct bactericidal activity only against few bacteria, and its main function is to digest PGN (46 -49).…”

Gene XV of Bacteriophage PRD1 Encodes a Lytic Enzyme with Muramidase Activity

“…Some bacteriophages, such as T4, P22, Cp-1, and $29, encode lytic enzymes displaying muramidase activity (Tsugita et al, 1968;Rao and Burma, 1971;Garcia et al, 1987;Saedi et al, 1987), whereas others, such as T7, 1, and @, encode lytic enzymes with different specificities (Inouye et al, 1973 ;Bienkowska-Szewczyk and Taylor, 1980;. In addition to lytic enzymes, bacteriophages quite often encode helper protein factors that facilitate the acces of lytic enzymes to the susceptible bond in the cell wall (Josslin, 1970;Wilson, 1982;Young, 1992;Steiner et al, 1993;Johnson and Mindich, 1994).…”

Studies on Lysostaphin

“…The extreme mechanical strength of X. aureus walls is supposed to be due to the high degree of cross-linking with penta-glycine bridges between the &-amino group of lysine in one tetrapeptide and the C-terminal D-alanine of an adjacent tetrapeptide (cf. [3], Fig.4). The mucopeptide of M .…”

“…The mucopeptide of M . lysodeikticus has a more open structure in which only about 4001, of the muramic acid residue have bound tetrapeptides [3], rendering the cells more fragile and sensitive to several bacteriolytic enzymes.…”