BACKGROUND Rhodococcus equi is a gram positive, intracellular pathogen of foals worldwide. The aim of this study was to determine whether there was an increasing resistance occurring in Rhodococcus equi towards the antibiotics rifampin and erythromycin over a seven year period. The investigation was carried out with the use of E test strips (epsilometers) for rifampin and erythromycin in order ...

A bacterial strain, which based on the sequences of its 16S rRNA, gyrB, catA, and qsdA genes, was identified as a Rhodococcus sp. closely related to Rhodococcus erythropolis, was isolated from soil by enrichment on the Pseudomonas quinolone signal [PQS; 2-heptyl-3-hydroxy-4(1H)-quinolone], a quorum sensing signal employed by the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The isolate, termed...

The prevalence of virulent Rhodococcus equi in soil isolates from two horse farms in South Africa and nine clinical isolates from six foals, a foal foetus, a dog, and a monkey was investigated. The isolates were tested for the presence of virulence plasmid DNA and 15- to 17-kDa antigens by immunoblotting. Rhodococcus equi was isolated from almost all of the soil samples obtained from the two fa...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to determine the MICs of 32 antimicrobial agents for 200 isolates of Rhodococcus equi of animal origin by applying a recently described broth microdilution protocol, and to investigate isolates with distinctly elevated rifampicin MICs for the genetic basis of rifampicin resistance. METHODS The study included 200 R. equi isolates, including 160 isolates fro...

The acquisition of a virulence plasmid is sufficient to turn a beneficial strain of Rhodococcus bacteria into a pathogen.

Fe-type nitrile hydratase (NHase) from Rhodococcus sp. N771 has a novel non-heme iron active center with two post-translationally modified cysteine residues, cysteine-sulfenic and -sulfinic acids. The modified residues are involved in the sequence motif, Cys-Xxx-Leu-Cys-Ser-Cys (Xxx = Ser(Fetype)/Thr(Co-type)), which is conserved among all known NHases as well as in the homologous enzyme, thioc...

A new insertion sequence (IS2112) was identified in the genome of the 1-haloalkane-utilizing bacterium Rhodococcus rhodochrous NCIMB 13064. The insertion element is 1415 bp long, does not contain terminal inverted repeats, and is not flanked by directly repeated sequences. IS2112 belongs to the IS110 family of transposable elements, and forms a separate subfamily, along with IS116. Two copies o...

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