The preservation of Brucella melitensis was of initerest because Elberg and Faunce (1957) had shown that a nondependent mutant derived from a streptomycindepenident strain of B. melitensis was immunogeniic wheni administered as a living vaccine. Huttoni et al. (1951) and, more recenitly, Alexander and van Drimmelen (1956), showed that lyophilization was practical for preserving the viability of...

Brucellosis is a serious problem in Sicily. Brucella melitensis was identified as the species most frequently isolated in humans in Italy. No data, however, are available about the molecular epidemiological characterization of Brucella isolates from humans. We have conducted this study to molecularly characterize clinical isolates of Brucella spp. and to evaluate their antimicrobial susceptibil...

Brucellosis is a highly contagious zoonosis caused by Brucella. Brucella can invade and persist inside host cells, which results in chronic infection. We constructed AIR interference and overexpression lentiviruses to acquire AIR interference, overexpression, and rescue stable expression cell lines. We also established a Brucella melitensis 16M-infected macrophage model, which was treated with ...

Brucella melitensis is the cause of brucellosis in sheep and goats, which often results in abortion. Few cases of B. melitensis infection in goats have occurred in the United States over the last 25 years. However, vigilance must be maintained, as it is for the bovine milk industry, to ensure that brucellosis is not introduced into the U.S. goat population. The objective of this study was to de...

Pathogens infecting mammalian cells have developed various strategies to suppress and evade their hosts’ defensive mechanisms. In this line, the intracellular bacteria that are able to survive and propagate within their host cells must have developed strategies to avert their host’s killing attitude. Studying the interface of host-pathogen confrontation can provide valuable information for defi...

Many virulence genes have been detected in attenuated mutants of Brucella melitensis 16 M; nevertheless, a complete report of these genes, including the main Cluster of Orthologous Groups (COG) represented as well as the taxonomical distribution among all complete bacterial and archaeal genomes, has not been analyzed. In this work a total of 160 virulence genes that have been reported in attenu...

Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) were extracted from rough strains of Brucella abortus and Brucella melitensis and from strains of the naturally occurring rough species Brucella ovis and Brucella canis. Brucella rough lipopolysaccharides (R-LPS) were readily distinguished from Brucella smooth lipopolysaccharides (S-LPS) and enterobacterial R-LPS, by their chemical, physical, and serological characteri...

In a herd of 20 sheep in Sweden, a country where brucellosis has never been diagnosed in sheep or goats, a total of six sheep were found serologically positive to Brucella melitensis in two different rounds of sampling. Yersinia enterocolitica serotype O:9 could at the time of the second sampling be isolated from four sheep, one of them at the same time serologically positive for B. melitensis....

Brucellosis is the most frequent zoonotic disease worldwide, with over 500,000 new human infections every year. Brucella melitensis, the most virulent species in humans, primarily affects goats and the zoonotic transmission occurs by ingestion of unpasteurized milk products or through direct contact with fetal tissues. Brucellosis is endemic in India but no information is available on populatio...

Bartonella henselae is a recently recognized pathogenic bacterium associated with cat-scratch disease, bacillary angiomatosis and bacillary peliosis. A recombinant clone expressing an immunoreactive antigen of B. henselae was isolated by screening a genomic DNA cosmid library by Western blotting with sera pooled from patients positive for B. henselae IgG antibodies by indirect immunofluorescenc...