Dormant Bacillus subtilis spores germinate in the presence of particular nutrients called germinants. The spores are thought to recognize germinants through receptor proteins encoded by the gerA family of operons, which includes gerA, gerB, and gerK. We sought to substantiate this putative function of the GerA family proteins by characterizing spore germination in a mutant strain that contained...

During a study of myxosporean parasites of cultivated freshwater fish, a new myxosporean species, Henneguya pellucida n. sp., was discovered. Of the 120 Piaractus mesopotamicus sampled, only 10 specimens (8.3%) were infected. Yellow, round plasmodia measuring 0.5-3 mm were found in the serous membrane of the visceral cavity and in the tunica externa of the swim bladder. Sporogenesis was asynchr...

BACKGROUND Due to their efficacy and convenience, alcohol-based hand sanitizers have been widely adopted as the primary method of hand hygiene in healthcare settings. However, alcohols lack activity against bacterial spores produced by pathogens such as Clostridium difficile and Bacillus anthracis. We hypothesized that sporicidal activity could be induced in alcohols through alteration of physi...

It has been demonstrated that gramicidin S inhibits the outgrowth of spores of the producer-organism Bacillus brevis Nagano (Nandi & Seddon, 1978). Once again we have used the antibiotic-negative mutants E-I and BI-9 (supplied by Professor Y. Saito) in an attempt to relate control by gramicidin S over outgrowth to respiration, RNA synthesis and protein synthesis of the spores. Spores were prepa...

Lysinibacillus sphaericus strains belonging the antigenic group H5a5b produce spores with larvicidal activity against larvae of Culex mosquitoes. C7, a new isolated strain, which presents similar biochemical characteristics and Bin toxins in their spores as the reference strain 2362, was, however, more active against larvae of Culex mosquitoes. The contribution of the surface layer protein (S-l...

To isolate and detect anthrax spores form soil in different regions of Iran in order to find the anthrax foci‚ a total of 668 environmental specimens were collected during 2003-2004. Bacterial endospores were extracted from soil specimens via flotation in distilled water, incubation at room temperature, filtration, heat shock and culture on blood agar and selective PLET media. Bacillus anthraci...

This paper summarizes our recent progress toward developing anthrax and glucose sensors based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Ag film over nanosphere (AgFON) substrates was used as the SERS sensor platform in both cases. The AgFON substrates have been optimized for near-infrared (NIR) laser excitations by tuning the extinction maximum of their localized surface plasmon resonance ...

Two filamentous fungi with different phenotypes were isolated from crushed healthy spores or perforated dead spores of the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) Scutellospora castanea. Based on comparative sequence analysis of 5.8S ribosomal DNA and internal transcribed spacer fragments, one isolate, obtained from perforated dead spores only, was assigned to the genus Nectria, and the second, obt...

Pasteuria penetrans is a bacterial parasite of some plant parasite of nematodes whichcan attach to the cuticle of nematode. Differences in attachment of P. penetrans spores to the second stag juvenile (J2) cuticle may provide evidence for nematode cuticle diversity even between different ages of J2s. For investigating this purpose, we studied the effect of different ages of th...