A significant proportion of the population of the United States suffers from chronic pain, a category of disease that is not yet well understood by healthcare professionals. A majority of this group is made up of women; individuals who often have to convince healthcare professionals that their symptoms are real...
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the fourth most common cancer overall, causing an estimated 307,000 deaths in 2012. Prostate cancer is distinct from other cancers in that there are numerous treatment options, yet very few guarantees in relation to outcome. The most common treatments...
Ubiquitous pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa coordinates population-wide activation of virulence genes through quorum sensing (QS), where individuals transition from solo to social behaviors to benefit the population. QS is complex and mechanisms vary from species to species, but the concept is common to the bacterial world and has implications in various...
The quorum sensing regulatory pathway has been extensively studied for its impact on the virulence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, an opportunistic pathogen that causes acute and chronic infections in immunocompromised individuals such as those suffering from the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis. Part of the quorum sensing pathway that has not been...
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a ubiquitous gram-negative bacterium that is capable of causing infections in people who are immune compromised. The bacterium can live in a variety of environments due to the variety of virulence factors it can produce. It is well adapted to living in iron-stringent conditions because it can...
When iron levels are low, the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa secretes the high-affinity iron-binding siderophore pyoverdine. The cognate ferripyoverdine receptor, FpvA, has gained attention as the most divergent gene in the organism’s genome, showing substantial evidence of positive selection. S-type pyocins, bacteriocins with specificity to Pseudomonads, enter cells through FpvA...
The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa possesses two LuxR-LuxI
type quorum-sensing systems that use diffusible acyl-homoserine lactone molecules to
autoinduce and coordinate expression of multiple virulence factors. We conducted a highthroughput
screen for mutants deficient in skim-milk proteolysis—a quorum-sensing
dependent phenotype—using a nonredundant transposon-insertion library representing
most nonessential genes in P....
While the quorum-sensing (QS) diversity of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa has been well established in cystic fibrosis (CF) lung infections and in vitro experiments, little is known about its QS-diversity in natural environments. One significant QS-deficient behavior is social cheating. Social cheaters contain mutations that prevent them from producing...
BoGL is a programming language created for the purpose of computer science education that is specific to the domain of board games. Although there is a language grammar and an existing implementation that is currently used by students, a complete and formal language standard does not yet exist. In the...
Raspberry bushy dwarf virus (RBDV) infects red raspberry and black raspberry worldwide. Infection causes reduced vigor and drupelet abortion leading to crumbly fruit and reduced yields. While this crumbly fruit can still be used in juice, jam, and preserves, it cannot be used for the more valuable fresh and individually...
