José Ruiz Herrera, Mexican mycologist and biochemist (Ciudad de Mexico 12 May 1935 -
Authored about 300 publications with about 8,700 citations in according to Research Gate
Recognized as foremost expert on fungal cell wall in the world
Proposed a new mechanism of regulation of gene expression
With I. Salas Vargas. Inhibición de la elongación de RNA m. Un nuevo mecanismo de regulación de la expresión genetica (1973)
With I. Salas Vargas. Regulation of nitrate reductase at the transcriptional and translational levels in Escherichia coli. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 425:492-501, 1976
Isolated chitin synthetase and developed a technique for synthesizing microfibrils of cell wall in vitro
With S. Bartnicki-Garcia. Synthesis of cell wall microfibrils by a “soluble” chitin synthetase from Mucor rouxii. Science 186(4161):357-9, 1974
Discovered and isolated the chitosomes, intracellular organelles that contain and deliver chitin synthetase to cell surface
With C.E. Bracker & S. Bartnicki-Garcia. Structure and transformation of chitin synthetase particles (chitosomes) during microfibrils synthesis in vitro. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 73:4570-4, 1976
Isolated the 16S subunit, the smallest unit capable of synthesizing chitin in vitro
With S. Bartnicki-Garcia & C.Bracker. Dissociation of chitosomes by digitonin into 16S subunits with chitin synthetase activity. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 629:201-16, 1980
With Spanish researchers determined different aspects of the molecular basis of cellular differentiation and dimorphism in fungi specifically the role of polyamines and DNA methylation
Polyamines, DNA methylation and fungal differentiation. Crit. Rev. Microbiol. 20:143-50, 1994
Helped to characterize the structure and role of proteins in the synthesis and final architecture of the fungal cell wall
DEVELOPED METHODS
With J.J. Gonzalez. A continuous method for the measurement of urease activity. Anal. Biochem. 31:366-74, 1969
With A. Flores Carreón. Descripción de un metodo para medir glucosa y α-glucosidasa. Rev. Lat. Am. Microbiol. 16:187-8, 1974
With C.G. León Ramírez, L. Valdés Santiago, E. Campos-Gongora, L. Ortiz Castellanos & E.T. Arechiga. A molecular probe for Basidiomycota: the spermidine synthase-saccharopine dehydrogenase chimeric gene. FEMS Micriobiol. Lett. 312(1):77-83, 2010
Papers in top journals
With V.O. Singh, J. Van der Woude & S. Bartnicki-Garcia. Microfibril assembly by granules of chitin synthetase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 72:2706-10, 1975
With J. Kamper, R. Kahmann, M. Bolker, L.J. Ma, T. Brefort et al. Insights from the genome of the biotrophic fungal plant pathogen Ustilago maydis. Nature 444:97-101, 2006
HONOURS
Ruth Allen Award, American Society of Plant Pathology (1984)
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