A total of 133 Listeria monocytogenes isolates were characterized by ribotyping and allelic analysis of the virulence genes hly, actA, and inlA to uncover linkages between independent phylogenetic and specific virulence markers. PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphisms revealed 8 hly, 11 inl4, and 2 actA alleles. The combination of these virulence gene alleles and ribotype patterns separat...

Sixty-four verotoxin-producing (VT+) Escherichia coli strains were analyzed for VT1- and VT2-specific DNA sequences and for production of hemolysin. Strains of human origin were of the following serotypes: O157:H7 or H-, O111:H8 or H-, O26:H11, O114:H4, and rough:H7. Strains of serotypes O157:H7, O113:H21, O116:H21, and rough:H- were from cattle, while those of serotype O139:K12:H1 were from pi...

In this paper, we investigate the security of a public-key encryption scheme introduced by Huang, Liu and Yang (HLY) at PKC’12. This new scheme can be provably reduced to the hardness of solving a set of quadratic equations whose coefficients of highest degree are chosen according to a discrete Gaussian distributions. The other terms being chosen uniformly at random. Such a problem is a variant...

Bordetella pertussis adenylate cyclase (AC) toxin-hemolysin (Hly) (CyaA, ACT, or AC-Hly) is a cytotoxin of the RTX (repeat in toxin) family. It delivers into target cells an AC domain that catalyzes uncontrolled conversion of ATP to cAMP, a key signaling molecule subverting phagocyte functions. CyaA utilizes a heavily N-glycosylated beta(2) integrin receptor CD11b/CD18 (alpha(M)beta(2), Mac-1, ...

We examined the relationship between serotype and cytotoxic necrotizing factor (CNF) production in 123 hemolytic strains of Escherichia coli isolated from both stools and extraintestinal infections. Of 76 strains producing both hemolysin (Hly) and CNF, 66 (87%) belonged to one of six serogroups (O2, O4, O6, O22, O75, and O83). In contrast, 47 E. coli strains producing Hly only belonged to 21 di...

We studied the ancestry of virulence-associated genes in Escherichia coli by examining chromosomal regions specific to pathogenic isolates. The four virulence determinants examined were the alpha-hemolysin (hly) loci hlyI and hlyII, the type II capsule gene cluster kps, and the P (pap) and S (sfa) fimbria gene clusters. All four loci were shown previously to be associated with pathogenicity isl...

The clonal relationships among 187 bloodstream isolates of Escherichia coli from 179 patients at Boston, Mass., Long Beach, Calif., and Nairobi, Kenya, were determined by multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MLEE), analysis of polymorphisms associated with the ribosomal operon (ribotyping), and serotyping. MLEE based on 20 enzymes resolved 101 electrophoretic types (ETs), forming five clusters; r...

Sixty-seven human strains of enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) (from patients with more or less severe symptoms) were serogrouped and arranged according to pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns. We used PCR to investigate the strains according to known or putative virulence factors, and associations with disease were studied. All EHEC strains with the same PFGE pattern belong...