Oceanic crust covers nearly 70% of the Earth's surface, of which, the upper,
sediment layer is estimated to harbor substantial microbial biomass. Marine crust;
however, extends several kilometers beyond this surficial layer, and includes the
basalt and gabbro layers. In particular, the basalt layer has high permeabilities which
allows for...
Environmental mycobacteria are important opportunistic pathogens for many hosts,
including humans, cattle, and fish. Two well-studied species are Mycobacterium
avium subsp. avium, a significant cause of disseminated bacterial disease in patients
with AIDS, and Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, the cause of Johne’s
disease in cattle. Many other species that are...
Mycobacterium avium cause disseminated disease in immunocompromised people such as AIDS patients. Subsequent to crossing the intestinal epithelium, M. avium thrive within vacuoles in macrophages. The bacteria exhibit a different, more invasive, phenotype after being in macrophages compared to M. avium from laboratory conditions. We hypothesized that this intracellular phenotype...
Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) is a cause of
Johne's disease (JD) in cattle and other ruminants. MAP infection in the bovine
host is not well characterized. It is assumed that crossing the bovine intestinal
mucosa is important for MAP to establish infection. MAP's ability to infect
bovine epithelial cells...
Tetracycline (Tet)-resistant strains of Chlamydia suis were isolated from swine
farms in the Midwest. The isolation of the resistant strains was significant
because Tet is an antibiotic used to treat infections by veterinarians and
doctors. One of the tetracycline (Tet)-resistant strains, R19, was able to
survive in Tet up to...
Standard methods of measuring fecal pollution in water do not distinguish between human and non-human sources. Molecular technology enabled the development of host-specific markers that distinguish fecal sources. Human specific PCR primers, HF183F and HF134F, were designed based on phylogenetic analyses of partial 16S rRNA gene sequences from the Bacteroidales...
Candidatus Pelagibacter ubique is the first cultured representative of the SAR11 clade, a clade that is found throughout the oceans and accounts for approximately 25% of all bacterial cells [1]. It has a streamlined genome that is the smallest of any known free-living organism. In this study the complete genome...